Veins of Glass
by Aiakia
Summary: Editing. Sephiroth turned to Aeris, lips curling upward in a grin that did not reach his eyes as he said: 'This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.' /Seph x Aeris/
1. Prologue

"The human mind is more a universe than the universe itself."  
- John Fowles

**PROLOGUE**

* * *

This place is an eternal wasteland, filled only with the spiraling green tendrils of glowing ether. It is an interregnum between the living and the dead - a way-place souls travel before being reborn - the Lifestream.

There is no time here; it is a void of constant, unchanging motion: vast, endless, and empty. Empty, of course, save for its one corporeal consciousness. He floats alone in this place - having no control (for, really, there is nothing to control here) as even his body has become one with his location - there is no separation.

There is no way to tell how long he has been here. Months, years, centuries, perhaps. Light does not end to signal the done day; there is no consequence of time. Even the movement of souls is no aid; once one soul is reborn from the Lifestream and into the world, there is another to replace it. There is no ebb and flow - just a constant, monotonous stream.

He doesn't know why he is here, but he can guess. It is punishment. A purgatory, of sorts, meant to hold him here for all eternity. In this place, his soul will not fade or be reborn. His body will not age or die. Instead, he is doomed to stay here, floating around, forever. A rather bland future to live out alone...

"But it's the future you deserve," she said.

Well, almost alone. She had been showing up more frequently, more than the others, and he must wonder why she is the one he daydreams about most often. Of all of them, he would have expected someone else.

"Still not speaking?" she cocked her head to the side and folded her arms across her chest. "When are you going to ask me those questions? If you wait too long, you'll forget those, too." To display her impatience, she shifted her weight from booted foot to booted foot. "Well, fine," she said when he said nothing. "You and I have all the time in the world to wait."

And she was gone.

His mind flitted between the dreaming and the real. The Lifestream was still as he had left it, and that girl had only momentarily improved the emptiness. Still, his focus remained on her.

He would never ask her those questions - she could never bring anything new to him. She was merely a daydream that confirmed what he already knew: he was dead, he deserved it, he was wicked, et cetera. The questions he wanted answers to, had he ever asked them, would not have been sufficiently answered by her. It would have been his own subconsciousness answering them.

Utterly pointless.

Still, her presence was the only thing keeping his senses alive, for there was naught else in the Lifestream; though if he concentrated, he could still hear the voices of other souls, as small as breathless whispers. When he first arrived here, it was as cacophonous as a waterfall. After time it became the dull trickling of a creek. Now he didn't notice at all. It was hard to believe he ever heard it to begin with. He could barely remember that far back. How long had he even been here?

_Five hundred eighteen years._

The sound of the voice actually startled him. It wasn't like the girl's, where everything she said was malice obfuscated by kindness. This was different, new.

"Hello?" His voice cracked from misuse. Was that really what he sounded like? It resonated as weak and frail. Not like he remembered.

_Hello, Sephiroth._

The voice was like nothing he had ever heard before. Sexless, numberless, ageless. He could infer nothing from it, almost as if it were coded. Purposely ambiguous.

He must have become quite detached from himself if this newly created daydream had more answers than the previous ones. Five hundred eighteen years. He wasn't even aware it had been that long. Maybe that knowledge was a part of a sub-subconsciousness. Or maybe that wasn't it at all...

He hadn't kept track of the time. It was impossible here. No part of him would have known that answer; not even a 'sub-subconsciousness.' It must be an outside source.

He readied his voice to speak again, "I have questions."

_I know, and I have answers._

Internally, he grinned. There was finally change. Regardless of whether or not this thing could answer his questions, the presence of this voice was still a _very_ definite change; and after years of stagnant solitude, it made one thing very clear to Sephiroth:

He would get out of this place.


	2. DREAM: In the Beginning There Was

"When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream.  
When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality."  
_- Dom Helder Camara_

**DREAM: In the Beginning There Was**

* * *

Grading papers without opposable thumbs was getting easier for Nanaki. For limited extra credit, students would write comments and grades on the papers for him.

It was easier in the classroom; he could lecture as he padded around the room - that way the students were responsible for their own notes. When it came time to hand out the papers, he could have a student help him again, or he could call out their names for the students to retrieve them individually.

Nearly forty years ago, when Nanaki first started teaching history at the University of Midgar at Kalm, he was a bit apprehensive about asking students for help. Even after centuries of experience, he couldn't seem to master using computers, writing, or even turning pages.

It was possible to do these things, but took far too long to accomplish, and though the university was not excessively large, Nanaki had well over fifteen students in each of the five classes he taught, and therefore had little time to waste. The students never seemed to mind helping him out, as long as there was a little extra incentive.

By now, he had grown accustomed to asking for help. When students aided him, they usually met in his office despite it being so cluttered with ancient texts, anthologies and students' papers. The history department didn't have much of a lounge, and it made more sense than bringing them all the way back to his house.

"And for Taven's 'The Lifestrem'?"

"B minus," he instructed to his current helper. She sat in a chair in his office helping Nanaki to grade their final papers for the spring semester, while he paced the floor. His office seemed to get smaller every year, though Nanaki knew it was only because his collection of books had grown larger.

Bookshelves as high as the ceiling lined two of the walls, and his desk was pushed flush against the third. Books were stacked on each side of the door, which was always kept open, and littered the rest of the floor so that there was only one direct pathway to his desk. The only other free space in the room ran along the left side of his desk so that he could pace. He thought best when he paced.

There was nothing distinguishing about his helper - her hair was neither long nor short, arriving at about her shoulders when she was not wearing it in a tight ponytail, which she usually was. The color was ambiguous - not completely blonde or completely brown, giving her face a washed out appearance as she wore no makeup. It seemed as if all of her facial features ran together, starting from her small unobtrusive chin, running up through thin lips, and a slightly wide nose. She wore loose, neutral-toned clothing, concealing her form almost entirely.

Aside from her appearance, her grades were also nothing spectacular - straight B's and C's. She was so ordinary and unmemorable that Nanaki had a hard time associating the name on her essays, and on his attendance sheet, with her face. Currently, he couldn't remember her name for the life of him.

"Okay," she said, once she had written the grade. "Any comments?"

He paused, hearing foot steps echo down the hallway stopping just outside his door, and turned as a knock sounded against the wall. Seeing who it was, he gave a toothy grin, which might have looked like a snarl lacking malevolent intent. "Nicholas Urfe? What on earth are you doing in the history department?"

Nicholas smiled and folded his arms across his chest as he leaned against the wall. He was a tall man with brown hair clipped short to his head. His face was wide with a cheeky grin, not un-wholly attractive, although his beak-like nose did not work in his favor.

"Just dropping by. You know, visiting the girlfriend. I thought I heard your voice in here. Figured I'd say hi to you on my way over to her office. Anyway, I'll see you."

He gave a short wave signaling his departure, and started to walk out, but quickly turned on his heel. "Oh, hey, that reminds me, there was something I was going to tell you..."

"What?" Nanaki prompted Urfe - that man had a terrible habit of pausing in the most unusual parts of sentences, and Nanaki wagered it was to make sure that the person he was speaking to was paying full attention.

Urfe placed his hands on his hips, frowned, and after a beat, chuckled to himself. "Shit, you know, I can't remember. Must not have been important," he said with a shrug. "Heh. Just you wait, I'll remember at three in the morning, too. Don't be surprised if I give you a call."

Nanaki snorted, "All the same, I'd rather you not. Just write it down, and give it to me later."

"Ah, yeah, I could do that. Well, I'll see you."

"Give Lily my regards," Nanaki said before turning back to his nameless assistant. He listened as Urfe's footsteps grew softer before saying, "What do you say we break for today and finish up tomorrow around the same time?"

"Well...it's Friday."

"Right. I suppose you should have a break for the weekend. What about Monday?"

"Okay, sounds good. Thanks, Professor Nanaki. Oh, before I go, I forgot to mention: that essay that you helped me with was accepted into _Amalgam_."

"Ah, and...what was the title of that essay again?"

"'The Rise and Fall of Megalomania'."

He mentally chided himself. He remembered working on the essay, but still couldn't recall the name of it's owner. "That's right. And _Amalgam_, that's the school's hybrid journal isn't it?"

"Right, well, it's mostly stuff from the writing department, but there are essays from other fields that are published, too. Anyway, the official unveiling for the journal is tonight."

"I see. Well, congratulations," he paused briefly, still unsuccessfully searching for a name before moving on. "I'll be sure to pick up a copy tomorrow morning."

There was more clutter on Nanaki's desk than he'd like to admit. He used to be so frugal about keeping it neat. When did he stop caring?

The majority of the mess currently was the "Choose Your Own Topic" final essays, which he wanted to grade before the students left for the summer. In addition to that, there was his own miscellaneous research for a newer version of a history book he was writing. Most of it he knew from experience, but he liked to find other sources that appeared to credit him as well.

He was in the middle of attempting to organize his room for the third time since his nameless assistant left when he heard a sound behind him.

"Hey, Nanaki."

Nicholas Urfe had his head poked into Nanaki's office. Strange, Nanaki thought, he hadn't even heard Urfe walking up to his door. His hearing must be going.

"Back again?"

Urfe smiled and, seeing as it was okay, entered more fully into the room. He had several papers in his hand that were stapled together, which he tossed on top of the many others on Nanaki's desk. "Here, this is for you. It's a story a student of mine wrote. Real knockout."

He looked at the paper. It was double-spaced and easily pushing thirty pages. The title was in bold and read, "Veins of Glass." Just before he was able to discern the name of the author on the page, it slid off of the pile, dragging several other papers over with it. Nanaki sighed inwardly, "I'm not really much for fiction."

"Right, right," Urfe said, shrugging nonchalantly, "but it's about the planet and all. Historical-environmental-type stuff. Right up your alley, I figured."

Nanaki eyed the fallen paperwork beneath it. Now he would have or organize it again. He had too much work to do to be reading fiction, even if it was based upon history; his life needed to be dedicated to cold record, or at least whatever 'cold record' Nanaki wanted the public to be aware of.

"Well, I have a lot of work to do, but leave it here, and I'll try to get around to it," he said, knowing full well that once Urfe left his office, the paper would continue to sit there.

"Alrighty. No big deal if you can't. Just thought you might like it," Urfe said with a smile before he quit the room, leaving Nanaki alone with his clutter.

A copy of the journal had been slid beneath Nanaki's office door the next morning. Whether it was distributed to all of the teachers, or perhaps that girl dropped it off, he wasn't sure. Either way, he hadn't the time to read it at the office.

It wasn't until nine o'clock that night, after Nanaki had returned to his rancher-style house on the outskirts of Kalm, that he decided he had time to give the journal a cursory glance.

Kalm had grown almost excessively large since Midgar had been destroyed centuries ago. It was agreed upon that Midgar would remain in ruins - the funding to clear the rubble alone was more money than anyone was willing to spend. Instead, Kalm became a neo-Midgar as it expanded fulfilling all of the functions Midgar once did, with the exception of ShinRa's world tyranny.

That job had been replaced by Wutai, Nanaki thought wistfully, but that was centuries ago, and since then they had once again been reduced to a tourist town. If Yuffie had lived through the war... well, it was a long rime ago...there was no point in dwelling on it.

Nanaki was slightly embarrassed to have a 'doggie-door' to get in and out of his home, but it was the easiest way to go about it. A part of him longed for the structure of Cosmo Canyon, but it came and passed as a bit of a whim, like so much else as of late.

Once he was inside and settled into his bedroom, which consisted of nothing more than a large cushion, two drawstring lamps, and several other keepsakes of his past, he took the journal out from the pack he wore around his neck. With his nose, he flipped through the journal until he reached the table of contents.

All things considered, the journal was not very large for containing essays from multiple fields. Advertisements included, it couldn't be any longer than one-hundred fifty pages.

He searched down the list, organized by author's last name, until he found the title of the piece: "The Rise and Fall of Megalomania." His eyes traced over to the listed name: Uchiha, Kyoko. That was it. The name sounded extremely Wutain, though she didn't look it. At least he remembered her now, but knew he'd forget it by Monday.

His eyes also caught the name and title below hers: Urikawa, Aya (also from Wutai, he wagered) - "Veins of Glass." It was the story Urfe had been goading him to read. Nanaki would not have even bothered looking at it, but he was tired of Urfe hounding him about the story.

Despite his initial comment about not caring whether or not Nanaki read the story, Urfe stopped by by his office at least three more times that day for idle chit-chat, and never once did he fail to ask about "Veins of Glass."

With his nose, Nanaki flipped to the page. If he just skimmed it, he could tell Urfe he had read it and get him off his back.

He began to read. The first line stopped him dead.

"This story begins from a true ending - for, really, a story's end is not simply the place where the author has chosen to stop writing (the trouble with stories, after all, is that if you keep them going long enough, they all end in death), and so, here we begin with the death of Aeris Gainsborough."

* * *

_No answer..._

"You've reached the phone mail of Nicholas Urfe. I'm out of the office at the moment, but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message, I will get back to you at my earliest convenience."

Nanaki growled softly within his office, but stopped short knowing that the speaker would most likely pick it up. "Nicholas," he said, his voice sounded hard and rushed. He tried to speak softer. "I read the story that you left me. I would like to get in contact with the author. Please call me back as soon as possible."

With his nose he pushed the speaker button to end the call.

He thought back to the story. No one should have known that name. He had purposely written Aeris out of the history books - kept her as an anonymous savior, so as to avoid unwanted speculation and investigation into her life. She deserved to be spared that much. Only one other living person, if you could call him living, would know her name, and he had been MIA since after the Meteor incident over 500 years ago.

The author - Aya Urikawa - who _was_ she, and where on earth did she get her information?

A knock on the wall interrupted his thoughts as his once nameless student entered into the room.

"Hello, Kyoko," Nanaki said, pleased with himself that her name survived his memory through the weekend.

"Hey, Professor Nanaki. Are you busy? I was wondering if we could go over my classes for next year."

"Of course," he said, pausing a moment before asking, "What is the easiest way to get in contact with a student that you are unacquainted with?"

"Uh...I'd assume through email. You just plug in their last name, add 'at u-m-k dot e-d-u,' and there you go."

"I see. Would you mind helping me to send one before we go over your classes?"

"Surely," she said, and sat down at his desk. After a flurry of clicks on his computer, she asked, " Okay, what's their last name?"

"Urikawa."

"Aya Urikawa?"

Nanaki paused then said, "Yes, do you know her?"

"Well, that's strangely convenient. She's my roommate."

"Oh, your roommate? That _is _rather convenient... The next time you see her, would you tell her to come to my office?"

"Yeah, Aya's pretty great. I met her during orientation and we've been rooming ever since. She's not in any kind of trouble though, is she?"

"No, she's not in trouble."

"Okay, good. The last thing I need is for her to get upset about something right before senior week. She'd mope around Costa del Sol all week, and that's if I can even get her out of the hotel room.

"Anyway, she's busy tonight haggling boat tickets from a travel agent, but I'll tell her to come see you tomorrow. Did you want to see her at any particular time?"

"As soon as she can. It's rather important."

* * *

It had been three days before she actually came to his office. It seemed much longer.

During that time, Nanaki thought of what he would say to her over and over in his head. In his mind he envisioned asking her questions, and made up answers she could potentially give him so that he could think of follow up questions.

Each day that passed was a day closer to the end of the semester when Nanaki would hand back the final papers, and the students would leave. If Miss Urikawa was rooming with Kyoko, Nanaki reasoned, she too would be a senior, and she too would be leaving the university for good.

For three days he waited, and on that third day, as Nanaki was getting ready to head home, she came.

"My roommate said you wanted to see me?"

She stood nervously in his office. Her face was marred with makeup - kohl-eyed with matted mauve lips - making her seem much paler than she was. Her hair was discolored with nearly iridescent streaks of red, and her clothes consisted of dark, earthy browns and greens.

Still, everything else looked the same about her: same height and body type, her eyes were still a vibrant emerald green, her face still curved the same way - same rounded cheek bones, same delicate smile, same scent. Even beneath the caked lipstick, the creases and smudges of liner on her eyes, and even in despite of the horribly unnatural color of her hair, she still looked like her.

She still looked like Aeris.

Nanaki balked. Looked at her. Opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again.

The girl looked behind her as if to confirm that the door was still open, confirm an escape route if she needed it. Her fingers worked themselves around her gaudy rings and bracelets. "Am I in some kind of trouble?" Her voice was soft and timid, but it too hadn't changed, though it did serve to bring Nanaki out of his reverie.

"No, no, it's nothing like that," he said. He was tempted to pad towards her and examine her further, but could smell waves of anxiety flowing from her and restrained himself. "I wanted to talk to you about 'Veins of Glass'."

"About what?"

"The story that you wrote. 'Veins of Glass'."

Her lips twitched before they broke into an awkward smile, "What story?"

Nanaki frowned. There was something about her that was...off. Her appearance was so harsh - nothing like what Aeris was in the past - but beneath it all, she was kind, soft-spoken and timid, a very off-putting paradox.

If he closed his eyes and listened to the timbre of her voice, listened to the way that she moved, and smelled her scent, he would have believed it was Aeris back from the dead; but when he opened his eyes again, he knew it wasn't true.

"'Veins of Glass,'" he repeated again. "The story that you submitted to _Amalgam_. The one about Sephiroth and Aeris Gainsborough."

"The one about Sephiroth and _who_? I don't...um, are you sure you have the right person? I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Aya Urikawa? You _are _Aya Urikawa, right? Professor Urfe gave me your paper."

"Yeah...I'm Aya, but, well, I don't know how Professor Urfe could have given you anything of mine. I've never had him as a professor."

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Thank you to _Masamune Song _and _Dark Beauty_ for also helping me edit.

It was pointed out to me that the name "Taven" is the 'main character's' name in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Yeah...so did not know that. Just thought it sounded nifty.

Also, in case you're wondering from first version of VoG, I've bumped the time between the Meteor and the present to 500 years instead of just twenty, because, well, I'm lazy. I don't have to account for any characters I don't want to now. But, fear not, there _will_ be cameos in one way, shape, or form (and not just as flashbacks) from several of them.

Here's a forewarning as well: I intend to write this story _well_. If you want to read a quick hook up between Aeris and Seph, please look else where...it will take some time to develop because, dear God, do they have a-freaking-lot of baggage. But, when it does happen, it will be well deserved, and (here's the kicker) _believable_.


	3. DREAM: A Timeline of You

_"_Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future,  
concentrate the mind on the present moment."  
_-Siddharta_

**DREAM: A Timeline of You**

* * *

Momentarily, Nanaki was speechless - thoughtless even - until his mind registered what was said. Aya wasn't his student... But how could Urfe give him the paper if she wasn't even his student?

"Wait, you're not? Did you just give the paper to him?" Nanaki said, reaching for some sort of explanation.

He was sure that when Urfe had given the paper to him, he specifically said that a student of his wrote it. But not only was this girl denying that Urfe was her professor, but she was denying that she wrote the piece at all. But, more confounding than that, was who she looked like.

"No," Aya said, her voice tinted with annoyance, "look, I'm a sociology major. I don't write fiction."

She looked so similar to Aeris, but the way she held herself, the way she spoke - the aggravated tone in her voice, however slight - was nearly enough to shatter the image.

Nearly.

Nanaki shook his head. Something was not right with this picture.

He hopped onto the chair by his desk, and with his nose, he pushed papers aside to find the original copy of the story Urfe had left him, and when that yielded nothing, he opened the top drawer of his desk with his paw, and used his teeth to gingerly grasp his copy of _Amalgam. _This he set on the desk, and motioned for Aya to pick up.

"The story is printed in there. Look at the table of contents - you're listed just beneath your roommate's name."

She sighed impatiently, "Under Kyoko?"

When Nanaki nodded, Aya shrugged and did as she was told. She traced her index finger down the column of names and then frowned. She flipped through the journal hurriedly, pausing as her eyes scanned through the pages.

"Oh, this is a mistake," she said to Nanaki, then her lips curled into a grin, and she chuckled softly. "The funny thing is that the other day, two of my friends both said that they liked my story, and for the life of me, I had no idea what they were talking about. I figured they were just playing some joke on me, so I went along with it."

Aya closed the journal, set it back on Nanaki's desk, then placed her hands on her hips. "This was probably what they were talking about. But," she nodded towards the journal, "I didn't write that story; it's not mine. They must have made some typo on the name or something."

That might have been a possibility, but it just sounded wrong, Nanaki thought. It made things too convenient, and didn't explain how Urfe would have given him a copy with that same typo. Yet with nothing else to go on, there was little else he could say.

Nanaki had so anticipated talking with the author of "Veins of Glass." To ask them how they knew the truth behind Aeris and Sephiroth, how they even knew her name, and now the only lead he had to it was a dead end. He needed time to think things over.

"Well, thank you," he said, signaling a coming end to the conversation, though he found himself unable to officially conclude it. There were things he needed to know about her. More than anything, Nanaki just wanted to ask, "Why do you look like Aeris?" She would think him mad if he asked that...that is if she didn't already.

She nodded and smiled, a smile that, if Aeris wore it, would have been arresting. However on the girl it looked awkward and forced, which may very well have been how she was feeling as she stood in his office.

Something in Nanaki didn't want the girl to leave. He felt that if she left that he would never see her again and that his questions would never be answered.

"Sorry I couldn't be more help," she said, backing up towards the doorway. "Maybe try asking the publishers?"

"Thank you, I will keep that in mind," Nanaki said, though he had no intention of doing so. This had nothing to do with the publishers.

She nodded and smiled again as she turned and left; the echo of her footsteps became softer, softer, until Nanaki heard the sound of a door slam.

Meeting with the girl had left Nanaki terrified. Both for himself, and for the girl. It was too convenient that the author of such a story - a story that so clearly detailed Aeris' death and the events that followed - would look just like the dead Cetra herself.

Her actions and mannerisms were utterly perplexing. Even during such a short conversation, Nanaki could see brief fragments of Aeris shine through. It was as simple as a hand gesture, the way she said a word, or even a look.

Then, just as quickly, she would do something un-Aeris. A quick look of annoyance, placing her hands almost flippantly on her hips, speaking in anything but a sweet, kindly tone.

It was almost as if, Nanaki thought, Aeris were buried deep inside of Aya's subconsciousness and was fighting desperately to get out. Or perhaps that was just Aya's personality and had nothing to do with Aeris at all, but Nanaki refused to believe that.

Still, that left the question of the paper. If Aya Urikawa didn't write "Veins of Glass," then who did? Whoever it was, if they knew the true history of Aeris, Nanaki wouldn't be surprised if they also recognized Aya as being similar in appearance, a doppelganger almost. If that was the case, then the purpose of the paper was to get Nanaki to meet her, wasn't it? But to what end? And what was Aya's involvement? Was she just an innocent bystander? Or something else entirely?

Nanaki shook his head forcefully, as if the action would stop the questions from coming. There was only one person left who could answer these questions. The source of it all - the man who gave him the paper to read in the first place.

Nicholas Urfe.

* * *

After leaving Nanaki's office, Aya headed back to her dorm. Her first thought was that she was eternally glad she didn't have Nanaki as her history professor as he seemed rather senile and odd.

Then she brooded slightly over the awkwardness of the meeting: the professor seemed very anxious to know the author of that story, and she had not the slightest clue as to why, or especially how her name ended up there.

Though she suggested there might have been a typo, it still seemed rather strange that _Amalgam'_s possible misspelling would then correctly spell her own name; and as for the other oddity, though she hadn't read the fiction story, Aya wasn't sure what a history teacher would find so imperative about it...

Her mind quickly flitted towards graduation and, more importantly, senior week. Aya wouldn't let the meeting distract her from the trip she had been saving money all semester for. Aya had never been to Costa del Sol, so she was undeniably excited. Just the thought of all those soaking wet, scantily-clan men...

Kyoko, thankfully, had taken care of everything, as Aya had little experience with traveling. Most likely, Kyoko was already on her way to Junon to secure the boat tickets, and Aya would just join her later that day.

Aya's walk to Building Six, the building her room was in, was rather short as the only thing that separated it from the history department was the soccer field, which Aya cut across.

The building itself consisted of three floors and was wide and squat and built of bricks - just the same as all of the other dormitories, given numbers in lieu of names - reminiscent of the former sectors in Midgar.

After swiping her key card to get into the building, she climbed the stairs, grungy with dirt footsteps, to the second floor, found her room, and was quite surprised to see who was still in it.

* * *

After six attempts, Urfe still hadn't picked up his phone, and he could not be found in his office. Nanaki was frantic. It had only been an hour after Aya had left his office, but he needed to know what was going on _now._

Nanaki's messages became more imperative as he left them. First leaving a bit of small talk and asking Nicholas to call him back, then forgetting the small talk and explicitly listing how important it was to call back quickly, then informing him that he was dropping by the office, then leaving out the 'please's and 'thank you's and almost demanding a phone call.

Still, he left another message on Urfe's voice mail, just as hurried and informal as the last, and decided that if _he_ couldn't get in contact with Urfe, maybe Lily _could_.

Lily's office was only two away from Nanaki's and, really, he should have gone to her sooner, so after his latest botched attempted phone call, he padded over and scratched lightly at the door. He swished his tail behind him quickly, betraying his anxiety.

The door swung open quickly, and if Nanaki had been less focused on his own problems, he would have noticed her look of disappointment.

Lily was very tall for a woman, 5'11" perhaps, and impossibly thin. Her hair followed suit with her body type, and was also a very thin, colorless blonde. Today she seemed even more waif-like than usual, for a reason that Nanaki couldn't quite pinpoint. Maybe she hadn't been eating properly.

"Lily, have you seen Nicholas?" Nanaki asked quickly before she had time to speak. "He hasn't been picking up his office phone. He wasn't in his office either."

She sighed, saying in a small voice, "He didn't come into work. Have you heard from him at all?"

She paused, waited for Nanaki to shake his head, then said almost tearfully," I've tried calling him at home, but he didn't pick up. I hope he's not still mad at me."

Nanaki balked as his thoughts of Aya and "Veins of Glass" were interrupted by Lily's distress.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

She walked back into her office, Nanaki following close on her heels, then she slumped into her desk chair. "We got in an argument Friday night over something stupid, and he stormed out of my apartment. I haven't talked with him since."

Nanaki sat by her feet. "I see," he said simply. "I'm sorry to hear that."

Though the chair she sat in was a standard size, it looked overly large compared to Lily's lithe form. She rapped her clear-coated nails on her desk nervously.

"I haven't heard from him in three days, not since Friday... and it was such a stupid argument," she said again, a clear signal that she wanted to talk about it, without saying so.

"What was it about?" Nanaki asked, playing along.

"Oh, you know, just dumb stuff that all couples argue about, I suppose."

Nanaki snorted softly. He wasn't about to play twenty questions to get her to talk about something she obviously _wanted_ to talk about. It reminded him of Urfe's game of stopping in the middle of sentences to make sure you were paying attention, only with Lily, she would make you tease the information out of her, even though she was all but bursting a gut to spill it, and all just to make sure you were interested.

They must have fed off of each other terribly, Nanaki thought. Then began to wonder how it was that she was able to be a teacher, giving out information without being prodded with question upon question for it.

From the rumors he heard, Lily was actually a splendid history teacher, who specialized in Wutain and Cetran history, though she also delved a bit into the culture and traditions as well, feeling that her students received a better, more well-rounded understanding that way.

If only she were like that with her personal life, it might have made the situation a bit easier... Still, Nanaki had more important things to do than indulge her. He stood to leave, saying, "I wish you luck with things, Lily. Give it a bit of time. You'll both work it out."

"Please," she said, climbing quickly out of her chair as if in a panic. "Please, if you hear from him at all, tell him," she bit her lip momentarily before continuing, "...tell him that I'm sorry...and then let me know what he says, okay?"

Nanaki nodded, slightly unnerved, "I understand."

Padding back towards his room, Nanaki was undeniably frustrated. That was a complete and utter waste of time. At the very least, Nanaki thought that Urfe could give him information about how he received the story, and then he could go from there. But now this was a dead end, too. If even _Lily_ couldn't get a hold of Urfe...

Nanaki felt useless. He had this information, but could do nothing with it, and then on top of his frustration, was also a sensation of isolation, though it took him a moment to label it. Reading the story, then seeing a woman that looked so like and unlike Aeris that it was startling, yet having no one to truly talk about it with...

Of course, with the exception of Vincent, who had gone missing after the Meteor incident, everyone had long since been dead by now. Nanaki watched them grow old an die with his one remaining good eye, the other still a mass of scar tissue from Hojo, milky white and useless beneath the lid.

He watched their children die, then their children's children die, and so forth until he lost track of them all, forgetting who was related to whom, which one was a vague descendant of which family - it was lost to him.

And then everything became lost.

Nanaki's memory faded. Months bleeding into seconds, years to days, a whole century could take place in a month. His journey with those long since dead, whose names were once so strongly etched into memory and now eroded into sediment and dust, became nothing more than an exposed strip of film.

Or so he once thought. Reading that story and seeing that girl brought memories back tenfold. Nanaki only needed to be reminded, needed to remember, for him to feel like a little pup again: traveling the world, taking in everything - jotting every enemy, every town, every event in his mind - so that he could tell his grandfather back in the burnt sienna ridges of Cosmo Canyon.

All it took was the story and the girl for him to remember everything from his past.

All it took was the story and the girl for him to remember that everyone included in that past was already dead.

He hated remembering.

* * *

Kyoko was sitting at computer sending instant messages. It was a rather risky form of communication, as anyone could hack into your computer and read it, regardless of how much you cleared your memory and cookies and temporary files. Hidden deep within the files of your computer is where it permanently stays - your track record. If police were to search the computer, every document, every conversation, could still be read.

But then, that was what Kyoko was counting on.

She heard the clicking sound of a key being inserted into the door and quickly turned off her monitor, swiveling in her chair to wave at Aya when she opened the door.

"Hey you," Kyoko said.

Aya shot her a confused smile and closed the wooden door. "Hey, how are you?"

Kyoko watched her roommate intently as she moved throughout their small room. Aya kicked off her black boots, shoved her socks into them, and set them by her bed on the other side of the room.

"So?" Kyoko prodded. "What was that all about?"

Aya sat down on her bed. "Oh, I dunno. He thought that I wrote this story in that journal that you got into. But they must have made a name typo, or something. The real author must be pretty pissed."

Kyoko walked to her own bed, directly across from Aya's, and sat down in the middle, cross-legged. "You mean _Amalgam_? No shit, does it really list your name in there?"

When Aya nodded, Kyoko leaned over to a stack of books piled by the head board of her bed. She looked through the column until she found the journal, and pulled it out of the pile haphazardly, knocking the books on top all over the floor.

"Oh fuck me," she said, but left them there and opened the journal. "You know, I haven't even bothered looking through this thing. I only got a copy 'cause I figured the 'rents would want it."

"Gotcha," Aya said with mild disinterest...well, more like a touch of jealousy. Her parents wouldn't give a shit if she got published for something unless she won money with it - and then they would expect her to give half to them for having to spend money raising her in the first place.

"Ha! It _is_ your name." Kyoko quickly closed the journal and set it back on the pile, getting to work on replacing the books that had fallen without moving from the bed.

"So, how's it feel to be a falsely published author?" She asked, stretching herself nearly beyond capacity to reach the books on the floor.

"Just peachy, though I'm a bit more concerned with why you're still here. Weren't you leaving today to go to Junon? You know, for the tickets?"

Kyoko motioned towards a suitcase on her bed. "Yeah, got it covered. The bus doesn't come for another thirty minutes. Oh, and don't worry about all of your stuff. My dad said he'd come tomorrow with a moving truck to get all of it. He'll just bring it back to my place until we get back."

"Okay."

"You sure your parents won't care that you're skipping your graduation ceremony?"

Aya snorted. "No, they won't," she said with a scowl. "They didn't even want me to go to college."

"Yeah, I remember. Still, I dunno, thought they'd might want to come... Why don't you give them a call; just talk to them or something?"

Aya sighed and looked around the room. She noted that Kyoko's side of the room was vastly different than her own. While she had a blue plaid bed cover, and little decoration besides a couple potted flowers and plants, Kyoko's side was littered with picture frames, and colors, and a red paisley bed cover.

It was amusing to bring friends back to their room - most thought the wildy colored side was hers and the plain side was Kyoko's. They were both paradoxes in their own right. That was probably one of the many reasons she got along with Kyoko and not so much with her own family.

"Nothing to talk about," Aya said finally. They do their own thing; I do mine. It's been that way ever since I can remember. I haven't talked with them at all since I've been here."

"Yeah I know. That kinda sucks."

"Not really," Aya said with a shrug, though it obviously bothered her.

They sat in silence for a moment before Kyoko sprung out of her bed, announcing that she'd better hit the road if she wanted to make the bus.

She informed Aya that she'd spend the night in Junon with her family and get the tickets. Aya still had one more final to finish the next day, and once she was done, she would meet Kyoko in Junon, and then the two of them would take a boat to Costa del Sol.

"I'm so glad we're taking this trip," Kyoko said, then waved as she walked out the door. As she closed the door behind her, Kyoko turned and said, "I'll see you tomorrow."

Then Kyoko left grinning a grin that Aya couldn't decipher.

* * *

The clock read 2:41 a.m. when Nanaki heard a knock on his door.

His eyes squinted open at the sound, and with his mouth he pulled on the drawstring lamp. The knocking on the door quickly turned to pounding, and Nanaki scrambled to hurry towards it.

"Who is it?" he called out, his voice still thick with sleep.

"Nanaki?" Lily's tiny voice could be heard on the other side. She sounded timid, and worn down.

"It's open. Come in."

She entered and closed the door softly behind her. She was still wearing the same clothes she had earlier at work. Folding her bony arms across her chest, she bounced slightly on the balls of her feet. "So, this is where you live? It's nice."

Nanaki knew she didn't just come for idle chi-chat, and he wanted to cut to the chase. "Lily? What is it?"

She looked at him, looked away, then looked back at him before saying, "Nicholas...have you..." She paused as her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. "Have you heard anything from him?

"I know you said you'd tell me, but maybe you forgot," because he was too caught up in his work, she thought,"...or maybe you didn't think it was something important?"

"No, Lily. I still haven't spoken with him, or heard anything."

"I've called everyone I can think of..."

"Lily, it's almost three in the morning."

She looked suddenly hurt by this and looked down, as if she were a scolded child. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come... it's just... I have a bad feeling. These past three days... I just..."

Nanaki felt suddenly guilty, and his voice softened as he said, "I understand. You should consider filing a missing person's report."

She looked up quickly, about to protest, but Nanaki cut her off: "It's now Tuesday. He's been officially missing for three days. At this point, the police might have better luck in finding where he is."

She nodded in agreement, but still did not move to leave.

"Is something else on your mind?" Nanaki asked.

Lily frowned as if she were confused, and paused for nearly a minute before speaking. "Well...I went to his apartment."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a key, smiling wistfully, "I have a spare key." Once Nanaki acknowledged this, she placed the key back into her pocket.

"Everything seemed normal," she continued. "Nothing was out of the ordinary. His bed still wasn't made; there was the usual clutter everywhere. It didn't look like anything was missing...or that there had been a struggle...it wasn't even overly neat. Everything looked exactly the same."

"But?"

She hesitated before saying, "I know I shouldn't have done it, but I went looking through his things. I just - I thought maybe I'd find something. Maybe there'd be some kind of note or something...just anything to see if...I dunno. Like said, I just wanted to find something that might tell me where he was."

"And did you?"

Lily bit her lip before reaching into her purse. She pulled out a thin book, which looked more like a large brochure of some kind. "You were his friend, Nanaki. Do you know anything about this?" She placed it on the floor so that Nanaki could see it.

"'The Imperial Lunar Way'," he read. "Sounds like some sort of cult."

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too," she said with a slow nod. "Why would he have something like this?"

Nanaki pulled back his lips and used his teeth to gingerly flip the page. He glanced through the introduction page:

_"The Lunar Empire is a powerful state ruled by an all-embracing and pervasive theocracy devoted to the religion known as the Lunar Way. This new faith is at present a mere four hundred years old, yet it will grow in the future to complement and eventually replace every other form of organized or personal religion. It does this not through enmity or rivalry, but as part of the mission of the Red Goddess: to Heal the World."_

He frowned and looked up towards Lily. "Have you shown this to anyone else?"

"No, why?"

"Leave it here. I'll look into it." Nanaki began walking towards the door to indicate that Lily should leave. "File a missing person's report," he instructed, "but don't mention this pamphlet. Not just yet."

"But it might be a clue to finding him."

Nanaki said, "Or some sort of incriminating evidence." There was something about that passage that seemed familiar. But that in conjunction with Nanaki's other suspicions about Urfe regarding Aya and the story... The rabbit hole was getting deeper, and Urfe seemed to be at the middle of it.

"You should leave the pamphlet here for now." If Lily handed over the pamphlet to the police, they'd just file it away in some cabinet. Nanaki needed to look at it first.

"This will look incredibly suspicious to the police," he offered when Lily looked unconvinced. "Let me look into it a bit first. Then you can do what you want."

The minimal research Nanaki could do without actual travel was sketchy. He found small snippets of information here and there, remnants of what appeared to be some kind of religion, or perhaps more...

There was something about this 'Lunar Way' that was familiar. Something about it, specifically the continuous mentions of the Red Goddess, brought about memories of Jenova, though perhaps those things were on his mind because of the not so fictitious fiction story "Veins of Glass."

It was all too convenient: the story about Sephiroth and Aeris, Aya Urikawa, Urfe's disappearance, and now this pamphlet... They had to be connected in some way - Nanaki had lived too long to leave anything to mere happenstance.

Besides, all of these incidents were too close to what had happened so many centuries ago.

Something was definitely going on.

_"The Red Goddess is the spiritual head of the Lunar religion. The Lunar Empire was forged from her rebirth as a mortal and subsequent apotheosis. It is her son, the immortal Red Emperor, who rules her domain."_

It was this passage which concerned him the most. With it, he thought of ShinRa, of the Jenova Project, of Sephiroth, and then thought again about passage itself.

Perhaps it really was just its own religion, and Nanaki was simply supplying answers to his own questions. It wasn't overly difficult for his imagination to run amuck, after all. Urfe never seemed like a religious man, but perhaps he kept it private.

Still, the information synched up too seamlessly. Reading it, he could almost hear Sephiroth in his head saying how he and Mother would restore the planet to its rightful state. Still, Nanaki needed to know more about this "religion" to really connect them without room for doubt.

He wasn't sure how to find more information about the Imperial Lunar Way, but if it had anything to do with Jenova and Sephiroth, he knew someone who might.

The only problem, of course, was how on earth could he find Vincent Valentine?


	4. DREAM: Cold Record

_"_Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."  
_-Adolph Hitler_

_"_Things need not have happened to be true.  
Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure  
when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."  
_-Neil Gaiman_

**DREAM: Cold Record**

* * *

_Virusific Parasite-X Develops In Immune System  
_Sunday, April 30  
Associated Press

KALM - The discovery that the virus Parasite-X can develop in the lymph nodes of the immune system was unexpected, scientists say, and underlines just how complex the Parasite-X virus is.

Discovered nearly a century ago, the virus was named Parasite-X due to its ambiguous and bizarre symptoms. These symptoms could range anywhere from that of the common cold to severe psychosis and schizophrenia, hives and rashes, anxiety attacks, or even death in rare cases.

It was thought that the immature parasites only traveled as far as an infected person's liver, but now a more resistant strain of Parasite-X has been found infecting other major organs.

Researchers from Infection Control and Epidemiology at the University of Midgar at Kalm used mice infected with Parasite-X from Group A with non-infected mice from Group B.

The parasites were found to move through the skin at high speed in a random, circuitous path. After leaving the skin, they frequently invaded blood vessels to get to the liver and then to other organs as they matured. However, about 25 of the infected parasites invaded lymphatic vessels of the immune system.

For both the mice in Group B and Group A, the parasites' journey seemed to stop there, as they almost never continued to spawn within the lymph nodes. They were also seen interacting with key mammalian immune cells, suggesting that the immune cells were destroying them.

However for the offspring, a number of the infected parasites in the lymph nodes escaped degradation and continued to develop there and in other organs.

Lead scientific researcher of the university Dr. Menard Kirken said even a small number of partially developed or destroyed parasites could significantly affect how the immune system responds to infection.

Parasites developing in the lymph nodes might alert the body that an invader is present, and activate a protective immune response.

Alternatively, their presence might desensitize the body to the parasites, blunting the immune system's response to further Parasite-X infection.

* * *

_  
Mystery Stone Found During Search for Missing English Professor_  
Wednesday, May 2  
Associated Press

ICICLE VILLAGE - Investigators' search for missing English professor Nicholas Urfe took an ominous turn earlier today with the discovery of a mysterious stone hidden inside his summer home in Icicle Village.

The suggestion to search Urfe's summer home came from his girlfriend Lily Montgomery. The initial search commenced on Tuesday, May 1 and yielded no results, yet search teams returned the next day for a second look.

"The stone in question was found embedded in the wall paneling," Detective Rakev Morrin, head of the investigation, said. "We believe it to be a crucial piece of evidence, which may or may not prove this to be a kidnapping case, but at this time I am not at liberty to reveal any further information."

Barak Emils, a local resident on the scene, watched with his neighbors as investigators brought the stone out of the house in a clear plastic bag. Emils reported that from what he could see the stone was "about the size of someone's thumb" and emitted a "faint white glow."

"It seems a bit much to be searching in walls for a missing teacher, though," Emils continued to say. "I don't even know why they went back a second time. They said they were done searching the house yesterday."

When asked why investigators were searching through the walls, or why they felt the need to conduct a second search, Detective Morrin had no comment.

The stone will be sent to the University of Junon for further analysis.

* * *

_  
Contaminated Cetran Remains Found In Gaea's Cliffs_  
Thursday, May 3  
Associated Press

GAEA'S CLIFFS - A Wutain archaeologist has found what he believes to be the oldest remains of a Cetra infected with the virus Parasite-X. The corpse was uncovered in Gaea's Cliffs just north of Icicle Village, in Hinnom Valley - a name that is believed to translate roughly to 'Valley of Hell' in the ancient Cetran language.

According to tradition, the Cetra burned those contaminated with this virus alive in the Hinnom Valley in the hopes of removing this plague from their clan.

Kalen Oku of the Cosmo Canyon Institute of Archaeological Research discovered the 3,000-year-old remains of a man in an ancient family burial cave.

Oku said that until now the oldest archaeological findings of these contaminated Ancients were from the fifth century.

"As this is from the first century, it makes it the first known example of this disease in the world," he told The Associated Press. "It's very exciting."

Although he made the discovery three years ago, Oku said he held off from publicizing the find until DNA tests confirming the man's condition mirrored those found in previous cases. Though the current Parasite-X is vastly different from the strain that affected the Cetra, an exhaustive examination of the bones and of the fibers in the skeleton's shroud have identified that it is indeed the same virus.

Lily Montgomery, a professor at the University of Midgar at Kalm and expert on Wutain and Cetran history and culture said the Cetra's linen shroud indicated that he "was from the upper level of society."

She also said that contrary to the local custom at the time of burying a corpse and then later reinterring the bones, the diseased ancient was left untouched, away from the bones of his relatives.

"Even his own family was very frightened of him," she said. "They must have been afraid of being infected too."

* * *

_  
A New History Book For A New Age_  
Thursday, May 3  
Associated Press

KALM - Renowned history professor Dr. Nanaki celebrates the forty-seventh edition of _The Historical World_, which becomes available for circulation today.

_The Historical World_ has become the single most widely-used history book throughout the educated world, dominating both college-level and grade school classrooms for nearly two centuries.

The book's easy to read language makes historical facts fascinating to both young and old, and does this without sacrificing information. Though a limited number a critics remark on the lack of numerous sources, as Dr. Nanaki has lived through these times himself, he is quite possibly the most reliable source of information and has no need for multitudes of others.

While this edition still contains history dating back to before the Apocalyptic Meteor and the events leading up to the Great Purge of the planetary virus, it also contains up to date information on findings from just one year ago.

Though Dr. Nanaki was not available for comment, his publicist informed The Associated Press that he plans to "continue writing history as it happens for as long as he is able."

* * *

_  
JHSU Researchers Publish Final Results Of Groundbreaking Parasite-X Vaccination Study  
_Friday, May 4  
Associated Press

JUNON - Final results of a Parasite-X vaccine study conducted by researchers at Junon Health & Science University show that world-wide preparedness in case of a Parasite-X outbreak may be greater than initially thought.

The research shows 90 percent of those vaccinated 25 to 75 years ago maintain a substantial level of immunity. In addition, researchers concluded that in the long term, repeated vaccinations result in a much higher level of disease protection.

"Previously, it had been widely accepted that the effectiveness of a Parasite-X vaccine lasted only 3 to 5 years," said study's principal investigator Slifka Norr, Ph.D., a scientist at the JHSU Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute.

"This research shows that significant immunity levels last for many decades, perhaps throughout a person's entire life. It also shows that repeated vaccinations not only provide a short-term boost in immunity but, over time, create a sustained higher level of protection compared to those persons vaccinated only once."

To conduct the research, JHSU enlisted the help of 332 study participants.

Of this larger group, 306 participants had received at least one vaccination within their lifetime, some had undergone as many as 14 inoculations.

The timing of vaccinations also varied among the study's volunteers. Some participants had been vaccinated as recently as one month prior to testing and as long ago as 75 years. The remaining 26 participants in the study had never received a Parasite-X vaccination in their lifetime and served as control subjects.

Researchers also made key discoveries about long-term immune system responses following inoculation. While newer studies maintain that Parasite-X could travel throughout the bloodstream and infect major organs, Norr says that it can be combated with repeated vaccinations.

"We found that while antibody immunity can last throughout a person's lifetime, T-cell immunity declines slowly over time," explained Norr. "So the more vaccinations received within the permissible time slot of one vaccination per month, the better it is for you in the long run."

* * *

_  
Police: Tragedy Strikes Junon University_  
Friday, May 4  
Associated Press

JUNON - Four people were shot last night in what police are calling a random burglary in Junon University. Authorities said that all four people are still listed in critical condition in local hospitals after an unnamed gunman opened fire after triggering alarms inside of the science department around midnight.

Authorities did not release the victims' names pending notification of relatives, but said the gunman did escape with several valuables including evidence found at a crime scene in Icicle Village, which had only just arrived earlier that day for analysis.

Whether or not the burglary is connected to these crimes has not been disclosed.

Urfe's girlfriend Lily Montgomery was on the scene as investigators searched the building. She had this to say to the gunman: "Please return the stone. It's the only clue we have to finding Nick."

* * *

Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be republished, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **

This chapter will probably seem boring, but keep the characters and events in mind. These details will be coming back.

Thank you all for reading, and as always reviews are very much appreciated.

Random things:

"Virusific" is not a word. I am aware of it. It's actually a bit of an inside joke I have with _Storyteller in Silence_, who tried to use it in a philosophical argument (along with the word problematicity). So that's a bit of a kudos to him.

Hinnom Valley _is_ an actual location, though it's in Jerusalem (I think). And, yes, it does translate roughly into "Valley of Hell."


	5. DREAM: Preludes and Nocturnes: Part One

* * *

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,  
and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."  
_- Oscar Wilde_

**DREAM: Preludes and Nocturnes (Part One)**

* * *

Those articles would do perfectly for Vincent, Nanaki thought, as he put both the newspaper clippings and the Lunar Way booklet into a leather satchel. Those were the most pressing issues of the moment - the issues that seemed more than suspicious to Nanaki - and he needed Vincent's take on it for more reasons than one.

There was a good chance that Nanaki was taking these bits of information and running wild with them. He wondered about this Parasite-X and the vaccines, which reminded him of Jenova, and then thought that perhaps it was some how connected to The Lunar Way, which might _also_ have something to do with Jenova. Then there was the mysterious stone from Urfe's house, which from the limited description sounded like a piece of fractured materia. Why it was stolen, and by who, and how did all of this relate to Aya? Or didn't it?

It was too much for Nanaki to absorb by himself. Was any of it even true? Or was this just the paranoid thoughts of an old beast? Nanaki needed Vincent to find out, because if there _was_ a connection in all of this... Nanaki did not want act alone.

With his paw held on the small bag, Nanaki tugged the drawstring closed with his teeth. Then with his nose, he nudged the string over his head. He began to shake slightly, as if he were trying to dry himself off, so that the satchel would fall around his neck. Nanaki grumbled as the bag whacked his nose before reaching its intended destination.

The lights in his apartment were already off, and without a second look, Nanaki left through the doggy-door.

The journey to find Vincent seemed like more of a scavenger hunt than anything else. There was just no real way of knowing where he was.

He wasn't dead, of that Nanaki was certain. Vincent couldn't become any more dead than he already was. From the extremely limited information Vincent has disclosed about himself, and Nanaki's own experience with how Hojo's mind worked, Vincent was a living corpse in a constant state of decay and regeneration. A host of Jenova and mako and demonic blood keeping an otherwise dead body functioning.

Most likely there was more to it than that, but that was all that Nanaki could gather.

If Vincent wasn't dead, Nanaki at least could narrow down the locations where Vincent could be by excluding the places he would _not_ be.

For instance, Vincent would not be living in any location you could actually be considered _living_ at. He was more likely to reside in a cave or hovel then an actual residence. He wouldn't want to be around people - would want to be left in complete solitude. Nanaki would not be surprised if Vincent had dug himself into a hole in the ground. That scratched out all towns and cities.

Nanaki then thought briefly that he might have gone back to his coffin in Nibelheim, but doubted it. Even though it had become a ghost town, anyone could have found him there, just like the group had done so long ago.

It was quite obvious Vincent wanted to be left alone; when he left after Meteor had been thwarted, no one even realized. He didn't say anything to signal his departure. He was just gone.

Nanaki stopped in the grassy field just outside of Kalm and sat down. Without a true destination, running anywhere would be completely useless, and he felt that time was running out. The students were graduating in less than twenty-four hours; after that Aya would be gone. Then there was Urfe, the only one who might have known anything, who was possibly kidnapped or dead.

All the more reason to find Vincent quickly.

* * *

The bus ride took forever.

Like a moron, Aya had neglected to charge her cell phone before hand, and as it lay dead in her purse, she had no way of checking the time. She could ask someone, but it had been early when she left - the sun hadn't even risen - so for now, Aya was content to just lean back, and rest her eyes for the trip to Junon.

Though Professor Montgomery's Wutain History final held her back a day, Aya was not exactly remorseful. In this fashion, she was able to avoid Kyoko's family. While they must have been nice people from all Aya had heard, she would rather not watch them adoringly dote on their daughter. Not having close familial ties of her own, such attentions often made her feel ostracized and uncomfortable. Worse than that, Aya often found herself feeling bitter and angry towards everyone else who did have those ties. With a sigh, Aya dismissed these thoughts from her mind, not wanting to pursue them further.

The transport bus slowed, and Aya felt herself being tugged forward, until the it finally came to a halt. She waited for the aisle to clear before placing the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and taking hold of the small suitcase that she had set between her legs for the ride.

Aya followed several other passengers off the bus axiomatically, just one foot in front of the other, not even realizing she was off of the bus and walking through Junon until she was already doing it.

Though Aya had never been to Junon before, it appeared very similar to Kalm. Both cities were very industrialized, depending quite adamantly on machinery to get things done. She remembered from her history book that at some point, part of Junon had been a small, quiet town, much like Kalm used to be. Regretfully, there was no sign of that left in either location.

Aya walked through Junon, and saw Kyoko waiting for her by the ports. Kyoko stood with her arms limp by her side, her purse and suitcase by her feet. As per usual, she had her hair pulled slick back into a pony tail, and wore a neutral colored t-shirt with khaki pants. It only made Aya's black tank top and jeans contrast that much more.

"How was the bus?" Kyoko asked.

"Boring. How were your parents?"

"Boring. Ready to get going?"

Aya grinned, "It's about damn time."

Kyoko grabbed her bags and started towards the ship, already at the dock, but then stopped suddenly. "Oh, hey! I was going to wait until we got to Costa del Sol, but I want to give you this now." She reached into her purse, dug around it for a moment, and then pulled out a plain white plastic bag and tossed it towards Aya saying, "Happy birthday."

Aya caught the bag, and furrowed her brow. "Today's not my birthday."

"Belated birthday."

"I don't turn twenty-two for three more months."

"Fine, early birthday. Whatever. Just open the damn thing."

Inside the bag was one of the oddest necklaces Aya had ever seen, though what was peculiar about it was not the somewhat tarnished silver chain that the jewel hung on, but the jewel itself. It was about the size of her thumb, though a little less wide and longer, and held inside of a silver-wire cage, equally as tarnished as the rest of the necklace. The jewel was almost clear with, perhaps, a hint of green, but marbled throughout was black, as if someone had dropped ink into it. It looked raw - uncut and unpolished - but despite that, the stone appeared to be almost glowing, though Aya was sure it was just the way the sun was shining on it.

The jewel itself was okay, Aya thought, but the necklace as a whole was pretty ugly. The way the jewel was fastened to the chain looked cheap, as though it would break off any moment. It probably would have looked better hanging on a piece of yarn. Aya already knew she'd never wear it.

"I got it at a vintage shop. You like it?" Kyoko asked.

"It's awesome," Aya lied. "I've, uh, never seen a stone like this before... What is it?"

"Hell if I know. Just thought it looked cool. So, put it on already!"

Aya consented and undid the clasp, surprised that the thing didn't crumble to dust in her hand, and put it around her neck. When she had trouble clasping it back together, Kyoko impatiently circled behind her and quickly took the necklace from Aya's hands to do it herself.

"Thanks," Aya said.

"You betcha," Kyoko smiled. "Now, remember, that's a gift from me to you for your birthday. So don't you dare take it off. Promise that you'll always wear it."

"Uh...okay."

Both girls stood there, looking at each other, wearing masks.

Aya's mask was one of false gratitude. The rusted necklace was old and ugly, and she didn't want to wear it. The cheap thing was probably turning her skin green. Even as she stood there, Aya was planning to throw it out and telling Kyoko that it had fallen off. Maybe she would do while on the ship - just throw it into the ocean, and claim that it slipped off while she was leaning over the edge. If she lost it, she couldn't be faulted for not wearing it.

Yet Aya's mask was all smiles, as though she were pleased and thankful for the gift. It said that, no, she would not take it off, because the necklace was wonderful and she loved it.

Then there was Kyoko, who could see right through it all. Kyoko - who smiled as though she were happy only because her friend had liked her gift, and not because things were falling into place.

That was Kyoko's mask.

"Hey, we're gonna miss the boat if we don't hurry. Here's your ticket," Kyoko said, handing one ticket to Aya.

Aya looked at the thick glossy paper handed to her and frowned. "This says 'Bone Village'."

Kyoko grunted, "Yeah, I know. It was cheaper to take a steam ship to Bone Village, and then to go from there to Costa del Sol. Don't ask me why. That's what the travel agent said."

"But that makes no sense... Bone Village is even farther away."

"Either way," Kyoko said, ignoring Aya's statement, "I have the tickets for the next boat in my bag."

Aya said nothing and followed Kyoko to the ship.

Whatever line there might have been must already be on the boat, Aya supposed, as she and Kyoko were the only two boarding at the time.

They handed their tickets to a tall and lanky man. He thanked them and handed them two keys to room 10. Kyoko wasted no time in rushing Aya there.

The room was small, barely enough space to house the single bed and nightstand. Once in the room, Aya set her belongings on the bed, fingered the necklace around her neck, and said, "I'm going to walk around the ship for a bit."

"Oh, okay," Kyoko said, flopping on the bed. "I'll just hang in here."

Aya smiled internally. "Okay."

The boat still hadn't left the dock, and there was little breeze that hot morning. She should have waited until the ship was in motion, Aya thought. At least then there would have been some wind to cool her off.

She strolled the perimeter, trailing her finger along the painted metal railings, catching her fingers on occasion where the paint had chipped severely.

The ship was nothing to brag about. It was big and plain boring. Its white paint appeared yellow and chipped with age, and the rails were a faded red, the color of old blood.

Each creaking step Aya took made her nervous, as if the metal flooring would crumble and she would fall to the floor below. That floor probably would have crumbled as well, and she would just continue on, like a domino effect, until she plunged right into the ocean.

No wonder Kyoko got a good deal on travel. Aya would have felt safer _swimming_ to Costa del Sol.

She walked the length of the deck seven times, as slow as she could, until Junon became small and tiny upon the horizon. The sun was now full and bright, and if Aya had to guess, she figured it was around midday.

Leaning against the rail, feeling the wind, Aya took the gem of the necklace in her hand, and fingered the tarnished silver around her neck. It felt greasy and worn - absolutely disgusting. She reached behind her neck to take it off, but the clasp was stuck. Tugging on the necklace, Aya tried to break it off without success. With a frown, Aya yanked it quickly, and it snapped off at the base of her neck.

"Holy hell," she said aloud; that hurt a lot more than she thought it would. She reached a hand to the back of her neck and massaged the pain away.

Looking at the necklace, even in its broken state, she still debated on going through with her plan. The necklace was hideous, yes, but it was given to her by her best friend. Kyoko bought it for her because she cared about her, and thought it would be something cool and vintage - something that she would really like. Would it be right to throw such a gift away?

She bit the inside of her lip and curled her fingers around the necklace, letting her hand fall to her side. She stroked the gem with her thumb, its rough and unpolished edges making it slightly difficult, and stood there trying to decide.

Could she live with the knowledge that she threw away Kyoko's gift? Even if Kyoko herself never knew the truth, would Aya's guilt get the best of her?

Raising her arm straight out in front of her and over the railing, Aya let the necklace lead out of her hand until all she was holding was the two broken strands of tarnished silver between her index finger and thumb. The gem twirled ever so slightly, still with a glowing appearance.

Aya sighed and frowned, and brought her hand back over the rail. She couldn't throw it away. Begrudgingly, she shoved the necklace into the pocket of her jeans, and stalked off towards the room, frustrated with herself.

The room was vacant with the exception of Aya's and Kyoko's bags, leaving Aya to wonder where her roommate had gone.

"Kyoko?" she called out, even though she was quite sure no one would answer. With a shrug, Aya sat down on the bed and kicked off her boots.

Kyoko had probably gone out to search for her, Aya figured. She had been out there for quite a long time. Or maybe Kyoko decided to go take a walk around the boat herself. Either way, it would be best for Aya to stay in the room, otherwise, they'd both be circling the boat, endlessly looking for one another.

Reaching into her purse, Aya removed one of the text books she had saved at the end of the semester: _Virusific Theory in Society_ by Slifka Norr. It was a bit thick, but having studied it for the past several months, Aya hoped it would be engrossing enough to distract her.

* * *

Nanaki had chosen a destination. It was so simple, he couldn't believe he hadn't thought about it before - his guess that Vincent had buried himself in the ground might not have been that far off.

It wasn't enough that Vincent was in a place where people most likely would not disturb him, such as the mansion in Nibelheim. Instead, he would be in a place where people absolutely _could_ not disturb him.

There were only two places like that Nanaki could think of: The Ancient Forest near Cosmo Canyon, and the Enchanted Forest flanking Bone Village.

After realizing this, Nanaki had run back to Kalm to request an airship. Travel was quite different now - airships were frequent and inexpensive, and it wasn't too difficult to schedule a quick and private charter to Cosmo Canyon

Of the two forests, the one near Cosmo Canyon would be more likely, Nanaki thought, as Bone Village had started mass producing the Lunar Harp for tourists, so with the right price, just about anyone could get in. Granted, there _was_ more history surrounding the Enchanted forest...but perhaps that didn't matter to Vincent.

Regardless, Cosmo Canyon was Nanaki's first stop. Hopefully his _only_ stop.

* * *

Aya couldn't be sure of the time when she woke up, but the sun was setting through the small port hole in the room.

She sat up, book still resting against her chest, and looked around the room. It was dark - her vision blurred from both the lack of light and sleepiness. Aya only recalled reading thirty pages or so into the book. She must have fallen asleep after that.

After rubbing her eyes with her fists, Aya stretched into a yawn, raising her arms above her head, before collapsing back against the bed.

Lazily, she looked at the book that had slid down to her lap, and wondered why on earth she was voluntarilly reading it. Her thought process was slow remembering about Kyoko, but once remembered, Aya sprung out of bed, and the book tumbled to the floor with a thud.

"Kyoko?" She said in the dark room, not waiting for a response before opening the door and scanning up and down the hallway. Nothing.

Flicking on the lights, Aya glanced around for a message, or a note of some kind that Kyoko might have left. Finding nothing, she left the room and walked swiftly up the hallway and out onto the main deck.

She circled once, twice, around the length of the deck calling Kyoko's name, but to no avail. Hurriedly she approached one of the men working on board, he looked like the same tall, thin man she had given the ticket to.

"Excuse me," she said to get his attention, and when he turned, spat out, "I can't find my friend. I went to take a walk around the boat, and when I got back to my room she wasn't there, and I thought that maybe she went to take a walk, so I decided to just stay there, because, you know, it'd be pointless if we were both walking in circles around the boat, but either way that was hours ago, and she still hasn't come back yet."

He looked at her for a moment, not saying anything, most likely trying to un-jumble the mess of words that had shot out of her mouth like rapid-fire. Finally he said, "Okay..."

Aya waited a moment before saying, "Well, I mean, have you seen her? Or has anything happened, or is there some way I can find her? I'm just really worried."

He nodded, pausing again for an extended time before speaking. "Nothing has been reported to me of any sort of emergency. And, as we're in the middle of the ocean, she must be _some_where on the ship." He snorted like it all should have been obvious. "I'm sure she's wandering around here somewhere - probably looking for _you_ now."

He made a motion to leave, but faltered, sighed, and said, "Just in case, I'll keep an eye out for her. What does she look like?"

Aya opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again. She cocked her head to the side, almost like a confused puppy, as she thought.

"Um," she drawled out, "... average, I suppose... I... I really don't know how to describe her." The only descriptive words that came to her head about Kyoko were 'nice' and 'thoughtful' and 'patient' and none of which would aid in a physical description.

"Well, what is she wearing? What color hair does she have?" the man prompted.

"...she's wearing...khakis, I think, and a t-shirt--"

"What color t-shirt?"

"Beige. And her hair is blonde, well, no, maybe brown? No, it's sort of...like a brownish-blonde, and it's in a ponytail."

"Is it long?"

"No."

"So it's short?"

"Well, not really. It's average length, I suppose."

The man sighed exaggeratedly. "Does she at least have any distinguishing features?"

"No."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "How tall is she?"

"I'm bad at heights. She's not tall, I can tell you that. But don't get me wrong, she's-"

"Let me guess," he cut her off with a sarcastic grin, "not short either?"

Aya frowned. He was obviously making fun of her. "Look," she said flatly, "I told you she's hard to describe. You asked me questions, and I answered them. So can you help me or not?"

He nodded as she spoke, face becoming solemn. He inhaled deeply, exhaled, then repeated the action, as if he were trying to achieve some peaceful state of mind before speaking.

In a low voice he said, "Miss, honestly that description could match just about _anyone_. Isn't there anything more you could give me?"

Aya's hands were clenched tightly at her sides. "I don't know what you want me to say. Kyoko's just really average. Maybe try calling out her name or something? I don't know."

"I see. I'll keep my eyes open, but my suggestion is that you go back to your room, and wait for her until we reach Bone Village. When we dock, everyone will have to get off the boat. You'll be sure to find her then."

Aya nodded and began to trudge back to the room, her imagination getting the best of her along the way. What if Kyoko had fallen overboard? Or what if she had been kidnapped? Since they were in the middle of the ocean, the kidnapper would have to kill her and toss her body out to sea if he didn't want to be caught. Or what if...

Stop it, Aya told herself. She was overreacting. Kyoko might have lost track of the time and was still wandering around. Or perhaps she had even gone back to the room. Maybe she was already there waiting.

Aya's pace quickened to a brisk walk, then to a jog, and she had to restrain herself from breaking into an all out run as she made her way back to the room. She ran down the hallway towards room 10, throwing open the door that she hadn't bothered to lock.

The room was empty. Still empty.

Damn it.

If only her cell phone had been charged, she could try to call Kyoko. But now all she could do was wait.

She sat on the bed, knees pulled up to her chin, hands drumming listlessly on the bed. She stood up to pace the floor, back and forth and back again until she had forgotten that she was walking at all. She picked up her text book, eyes skimming over lines that never registered, as if she were flipping empty pages.

A voice over the intercom spoke to her after a buzzing sound telling her that they would reach their destination soon and to get ready to leave.

Aya had been ready for the past two hours. There was a sinking feeling inside of her, which she knew had nothing to do with sea sickness.

The boat left, and Aya would not move until it did. She had waited as the passengers departed and went along their way through Bone Village, until every last one of them was off the ship. She wasn't exactly expecting Kyoko to come prancing down the ramp like it had all been a joke, but just in case, Aya waited.

When that produced nothing, she had even cornered the ship's captain, who proved to be as usless as the crewman she spoke to on deck, offering nothing aside from placing a call to the coast guard, and suggesting to find help at the inn.

Once the boat was far off in the distance, Aya picked up both sets of luggage surrounding her feet, and walked to the inn, dragging one foot and then the other until the distance was crossed.

There was a heavy weight inside of her, and she wanted nothing more than to just collapse on the ground and cry. But that wouldn't help her find Kyoko. The only thing she could do was take the half-hearted advice of the captain, and call her friend from the inn.

The inn looked, Aya had to admit, rather neat. They had really outdone themselves to promote the excavation site with a pathway of fossilized rock leading up to the inn, and the giant rib cage encasing the entrance way. Even the inn itself was built of bone plates. She found herself momentarily able to focus on these to calm herself before entering.

The woman who sat at the front counter looked pissed off. Or maybe that was just the way her face was structured. Aya couldn't tell, and she didn't really care.

"Could I use your phone?"

With an exaggerated sigh, the receptionist rapped her red coated nails on the desk, and then picked up the phone, and clacked it onto the counter.

Aya picked up the receiver. Her fingers hovered over the number pad. She hit a few buttons before hanging the phone up and starting again. Did it start with five-four-one, or one-five-four? She couldn't remember the number at all. If only she had her cell phone...the number was stored in there.

She needed to charge her phone, and as it was getting late in the day, Aya figured it would kill two birds with one stone if she bought a room for the night, but when Aya asked the woman if there were any vacancies, she said, "I'm sorry, but all of our rooms are booked for the weekend for the Excavation Vacation."

"Look," Aya said, frustrated, "this is a bit of an emergency. Aren't there any rooms not being used for the moment? I just need to charge my cell phone."

"Like I said, all of our rooms are booked."

"I just need to plug in my phone..."

When the receptionist still looked apathetic, Aya said, "Well, do you have an outlet here I can use?"

"No, not really."

"Not _really_?"

"No."

Aya clenched her jaw. It was becoming difficult to keep calm. "Then can you at least tell me when the boat to Costa del Sol is coming?"

"The what?"

"The boat to Costa del Sol. When is it coming?"

"No, I heard what you said."

"Well?"

The receptionist shook her head and shrugged, "I don't know what you're talking about. There _is_ no boat going to Costa del Sol."

Aya stared at her for a moment. "What? That's not...yes, there is. I have the tickets right..." She dropped the bags to the floor, hurriedly unzipping Kyoko's bag and searching through the mass of clothes to find the tickets.

"Ma'am?" The receptionist leaned over the counter.

"I-I have tickets," Aya said, for some reason, her voice was trembling. "We were supposed to take a boat from Junon to here, and then one from here to Costa del Sol...but..."

"We?"

Aya's head snapped up towards the receptionist, and she quickly stood up. "My friend. She...I don't know where she is." She walked back up to the desk. "That's why I need to charge my phone. She had the tickets in her bag but--"

"Ma'am. There are no boats going to Costa del Sol. Those tickets don't--"

"There _are_ tickets," Aya insisted, wiping tears from her eyes. "She said that she put them...ugh, why can't you just give me a room with a damn outlet!"

The receptionist sighed, "There's an outlet in the bathroom right over there. You can charge your phone in there. That's the best I can do. The rooms are taken."

Aya was in no mood to argue. She crouched down again, gathering all of the bags in her arms, and carried them to the bathroom. With her foot, she shut the door behind her and unceremoniously dropped the luggage to the linoleum floor. After locking the door, Aya tore through her suitcase until she found her cell phone charger, then, practically ripping the phone from her pocket, she fumbled plugging the cord into the phone, and then into the outlet.

As the phone registered that it was now connected to a source of electricity and was turning on, Aya shifted her weight impatiently, tapping her foot rapidly on the floor.

"Come on, come on," she repeated over and over, and held down the number five - Kyoko's number for speed dial - and waited impatiently for it to start ringing. While she waited, she remembered the conversation she had with Kyoko about why she had chosen the number five for her speed dial when she hadn't programmed numbers three or four. Aya had replied that it was because the number was in the middle of the phone, and more convenient that way. The memory made her want to cry.

"Please pick up," she whispered to herself, and nearly put her foot through the door in anger as the voice mail picked up. Aya's throat clenched hearing Kyoko's happy voice on the other end, telling her to kindly leave a message, and if she were lucky, that Kyoko would call her back.

"Kyoko," she choked out, "it's me. Where _are_ you? Are you okay? What happened? I'm at the hotel in Bone Village. The damn woman at the desk won't give me a room... Oh, I hope you're okay... Please, please, _please_ call me, okay?"

Aya closed her phone, feeling that as she did Kyoko had become lost for good. She looked around at the stained pink floral wall paper surrounding her as if somehow it would give her an answer. Then she sat down by the luggage on the floor, pulled her knees to her chest, and sobbed.

Aya exhausted herself crying, and she wiped her face on her knees, smearing her makeup across her face, and onto her jeans. She looked up at where her phone was still charging by the sink. Standing up, Aya saw that the light had turned from red to green.

Aya sighed and unplugged her phone, putting it back into her pocket. She placed the charger back into her bag, and gathered all of the luggage together before unlocking the door, and going back out into the lounge.

The receptionist stood from her seat as Aya approached her. Her shocked face reflected how horrible Aya must have looked.

"Is there a boat that will take me back to Junon? Like...now?" Aya's voice sounded flat.

"The next boat isn't even due to arrive for another three days."

"I just..." Aya massaged her forehead. "I just need to get back to Junon. I don't care how. My friend is missing. I can't get a hold of her. And, according to you, the boat we were supposed to get on doesn't even exist... I need to get home."

The receptionist nodded, all of the irritation from earlier suddenly gone. "I'll check the system," she said. "I really don't know when the next boat will be going back, but I'll look for you, okay?"

"Thank you," Aya sniffled. "Is there anywhere I can stay the night? I know that this inn is booked, but is there anywhere else?"

The receptionist's face looked doubtful. "Well...there are plenty of people who camp outside... there are tents in the gift shop if you're interested..." she said timidly, knowing that wasn't what she wanted to hear.

Aya nodded, and, dragging the bags at her feet, silently walked around the corner into the gift shop. There was a boy who was behind the counter with the same pissed off scowl the woman at the front desk had. Perhaps they were related, Aya mused.

Upon seeing Aya, the boy immediately stood up and smiled, as if he were a completely different person. "Welcome to Bone Village! A place for nature lovers!" He proclaimed. "How can I help you? Would you like to buy a Lunar Harp?" The grin he wore overwhelmed his face.

His cheerfulness annoyed Aya. How dare he be so happy when she felt like crap? "Look, I'm having a bit of a bad day. Do you have any tents?"

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear...our single tents are actually sold out, but there are tents in our survival kit, if you're interested in those."

"What's in a survival kit?" Aya asked unenthusiastically.

The boy rushed from around the desk to grab one and show her. It looked like an oversized backpack, which he unzipped, and his arm brushed Aya's as he stood next to her. Probably on purpose.

"It has everything you need to survive in the woods. A tent, a pocket knife...there are some glow sticks in there, and some rope--"

"What the heck would I need rope for?"

"Don't you watch movies? You always need rope! Anyway, there's a sleeping bag, and a whole buncha stuff in there. It's really handy."

"Yeah, sure," Aya said. The survival kit was probably ungodly expensive, but she didn't care. She just wanted to be unconscious. She wanted this all to go away. "Where do I set this up at anyway?"

The boy looked up as he thought, scrunching his face to the side. "Hmmmm...Well, typically people camp out on the second level outside. There's a step ladder that will take you there. Buuuuuut if you buy the Lunar Harp, you could spend the night in the forest. It's much more peaceful there. It gets a bit noisy around everyone else outside - by this time of night, it'd be hard to find a spot to set up. Not to mention that it might not be too safe for a single girl like you to be out there on her own. So..."

He motioned over to a display of what must have been Lunar Harps next to the counter. There were nearly two dozen harps, which all looked nearly akin to the same tarnished silver that the necklace had been made of, with four strings that looked like fishing wire. But the thing that struck her the most was the cost: 100,000 gil.

"I'll pass," she said.

"Are you sure?" the boy asked. "You can't go into the forest without it."

"Why not?"

"Because the forest won't let you."

Well, that was amusing. Aya smirked, "The _forest_ won't? Look I might be having a bad day, but I'm not stupid, kid."

"Fine, you do what you want, but don't say I didn't warn you."

The survival kit cost her an astounding 900 gil, and Aya was not about to give this place any more of her money. After paying, she strapped the kit to her back, and started to make her way out of the gift shop.

"Hey, lady!" the kid called. "I'm telling you, don't go into those woods."

Aya kept walking, and made her way outside.

She walked through Bone Village as if in a haze, not even noticing as she climbed the rungs to bring her to the second level.

To her dismay, the entire second level was packed, just like the boy had said. There were bon fires and tents everywhere, and it was so noisy should could barely hear herself think. There was no way she'd be able to fall asleep with all of this noise, and that was if she could even find a spot to settle in. Right now, Aya wanted nothing more than to just be completely alone, and away from everyone so that she could think.

Looking towards the forest, she realized that if she wanted to be left alone, there was really only one option left. She thinks about the kid in the gift shop, and how he pressed her about the Lunar Harp.

_Don't go into those woods. The forest won't let you. _

As if a bunch of trees had any say in what she did. It wasn't as if she would be disturbing anything - she just wanted a place to think and sleep.

With a huff, Aya marched towards the woods, ignoring the boy's warning, and ignoring the fact that there was a good reason it was called the Enchanted Forest.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **

Interesting info for this chapter:

According to numerology, the number 10 (the room Kyoko and Aya end up with) signifies "Rebirth."

Also, there was a bit of a kudos to _Storyteller in Silence_ in there...his number on my phone is 5, and for the same reason.

The rope dialogue is a very random allusion to a movie...I'll give a brownie to whoever guesses it correctly!

Thanks again for the reviews! Those really inspire me to keep writing.


	6. DREAM: Preludes and Nocturnes: Part Two

_"An ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams...  
Man... is above all the plaything of his memory."_  
- Andre Breton

_"Channels are blocked in the mind, from the day.  
Lie down in blackness of night, forgotten remnants rush to the mind, or creeping slowly appear in the dreams."_  
- Nathaniel LeTonnerre

**DREAM: Preludes and Nocturnes (Part Two)**

* * *

Wooden stakes thrust into the ground surrounding the forest displayed painted warning signs to travelers. It was probably no coincidence that they were painted the color of blood.

"Do not pass without the Lunar Harp. Enter at your own risk," the signs all warned, but it must have been a gimmick to get stupid tourists to buy the Lunar Harp in the gift shop. They weren't really necessary at all.

Aya refused to give this cursed place any more money than she already had. That damned survival kit cost her 900 gil, and there was no way she would buy some pointless, junky harp, which looked more like a lyre anyway, just to go into the woods for some peace and quiet.

If the forest was truly dangerous, it would be completely blocked off and sealed behind some sort of steel fence with barbed wire. Instead, a person could enter at their own risk with the Lunar Harp. Total crap. If it wasn't being monitored, it wasn't really dangerous.

In all probability, the Lunar Harp was just an excuse to segregate the rich from the none too wealthy - Aya had almost done a double take when she saw that the price of one Lunar Harp was 100,000 gil. Only someone who was loaded could afford that.

This was what Aya thought as she sat on the wooden dock of Bone Village, staring into the ocean. After seeing the crowd of people in the camp site, Aya had walked back toward the dock to watch the ocean and think. Both sets of luggage were carelessly strewn around her, and her feet dangled off the edge. She felt drained. She reached into her pocket to get her cell phone, thinking that Kyoko might pick up this time, but as she did, her fingers grazed the necklace she had placed there, and she removed it instead.

She looked at the necklace softly glowing in her hand, and her eyes began tear up again. "Dammit. Stop it," Aya said to herself, but doing so only made her more upset.

"This is all your fault, you know," she said to the necklace. She sniffled, wiped at her eyes with her other hand, then said, "If it wasn't for you, I never would have left the room. I never would have left Kyoko..." As Aya said her friend's name, her voice faultered. Becoming frustrated, she clenched her hand around the necklace, making a fist, and slammed it against the dock.

Then, putting her hand back out in front of her, she opened it again to look at the necklace. Without a second thought, Aya pulled back, and threw the necklace into the ocean before her, watching as it plunked into the gray-blue water, and disappeared. The only reason why Kyoko was gone was because Aya had left to throw away the necklace, and she hadn't even gone through with it. Leaving the room had been completely pointless, and had stranded her here, and here she still was with that ugly necklace. Well, no longer.

The sky was getting dark, and Aya knew that she needed to act soon. With both sets of bags, and the survival kit slung over her back, Aya walked back toward the forest, almost certain that the signs were just there to keep out unruly mobs of the poor. She passed by the other campers again on the second level, but suddenly stopped by the forest's entrance, and looked again at the signs.

Majoring in sociology got her thinking about population stratification way too much. Forcing people to buy a lyre-like harp was a very strange way to go about separating the public, if that truly was what they were after. But what if there really was some merit to the warnings after all?

Hesitantly, Aya took several steps forward into the forest, looked around, and with a shrug walked forward some more. It seemed safe enough, though the inside of the forest looked drastically different from the outside. From the outside, the forest was lush and leafy and green. Even during twilight as the first stars were appearing in the painted sky, a warm breeze rustled the foliage, and an occasional bird chirped, or cricket sounded. But from within, things were notable different: black leaves whistled as wind pushed through them, shifting branches so that the trees and bushes seemed to be constantly shifting, ever changing. The trees completely blotted out the sky, and there was no moon to offer even a dim glow.

The wind carried with it a smell of decay, which at first Aya thought to be carrion, and searched the forest floor for some sort of animal corpse - half-eaten by passing creatures - in such a state of decay that the only thing preying on it still were the maggots and worms traveling through eye sockets and rotted meat. The image made Aya wretch, and her hand flew to her mouth as she swallowed the metallic-tasting saliva. She swallowed again and cleared her throat; the smell was becoming nauseating.

She pushed further through the forest, determined to escape the source of the smell, wherever and whatever it was. Thankfully, the scent faded as she continued through the forest. She stopped once it was a tolerable distance away, not wanting to walk to where she couldn't still see Bone Village behind her, or to where any larger sort of animal could be lurking, even though the forest had become completely silent since she had entered.

It was a relief to see that she was completely alone in the forest, without any of the rowdy public in the camp site. Now she wouldn't have to worry about noise from anyone.

Looking around again, the inside of the forest wasn't _that_ different. Aya had just psyched herself up, doubting her first assumption that the Lunar Harp was just a scam. No wonder the forest had seemed creepy. The smell of death was probably just imagined too... All of those warning signs really played a number on her sub-consciousness. What did she have to worry about? It was just a bunch of trees.

Aya let the luggage fall off her arms, thunking to the ground. She crouched beside the survival kit and started to unpack it. Inside, like the boy in the gift shop had told her, were a tent, four glow-light sticks, a small pocket knife, a sleeping bag, and extra rope. She chuckled at the extra rope, remembering the boy's comment about always needing rope in movies. In that case, now she was most definitely prepared for anything.

The tent was not difficult to set up. A glossy sheet of paper directed her in its structure with easy to follow picture diagrams:A goes to A, B goes to B, and so forth. But, most importantly, it was enough of a distraction to keep her mind occupied from Kyoko.

Once the tent was set up, Aya kicked off her boots and climbed inside. She unrolled the sleeping bag, and zipped herself in, thankful that it was warm enough outside not to need a fire, since that stupid survival kit didn't come with anything to start one.

Her body felt so exhausted that after lying down Aya didn't want to move at all. Yet as she prepared to sleep, her mind raced. She had nothing to otherwise engage her thoughts now that the tent had been built, and so she focused intently on the only thing that mattered - Kyoko.

Remembering the details that led her here was like trying to watch a scene obfuscated by fog. She was _almost_ sure that Kyoko said the tickets were in her bag. Was _almost _sure that she said something about there being a layover. Yet there were no tickets, and even the receptionist at the desk denied there ever being a boat to Costa del Sol in the first place. That fact made Aya feel slightly more suspicious than worried.

Reaching into her pocket, she took out her fully charged cell phone, and tried calling Kyoko again. Aya was not surprised when she did not answer.

There was nothing Aya could do now. She stranded here in the dark, anyone in Bone Village that could possibly help her would have been asleep by now; and with Kyoko not answering her phone, Aya could get no answers until daylight. It just made no sense to maintain consciousness anymore. She would find Kyoko in the morning.

* * *

The express flight to Cosmo Canyon took nearly three hours, and as the aircraft landed just outside the town, kicking up whirlwinds of red dust, Nanaki had to restrain himself from excitedly jumping off. There was a strong urge to visit Cosmo Canyon, which was probably the only location that had not changed much in over 500 years, but Nanaki cast it aside. Those sentiments would have to wait.

Nanaki immediately took off at a run towards the Ancient Forest, paws padding against the gravel. Though he didn't want to think about it, being back in this location set Nanaki at ease. Its familiar scent, the way the ground crunched beneath his paws, the warm breeze through his fur - it all felt like home.

Nanaki ran faster until he reached the crater caused by the Diamond WEAPON so long ago. Now the crater was barely noticeable, covered upon with fresh sand and gravel. He ran over it without pause, climbing up towards the Ancient Forest.

Just before the forest, Nanaki came to a halt, panting. As he caught his breath, Nanaki entered into the forest, keeping up his guard. He hadn't even thought about dusting off his materia and bringing it with him on his journey. The only thing that would be of any use was his Sense materia, which he never seemed to remove, even after half a century had passed.

Though Nanaki could now potentially sense creatures lurking around, would he be able to defend himself against one? He was lucky enough not to encounter anything on the run here, but this forest was not so forgiving. That caused Nanaki to worry slightly - it wasn't as if he had kept up his skills throughout the years. Would he even remember how?

He pressed on, inhaling deeply for any scent of Vincent's. With his nose to the ground, Nanaki trailed carefully throughout the forest, making sure to keep well away from anything potentially threatening.

As more time passed, Nanaki felt more insecure with his decision to come here, and wondered whether Vincent was here at all. Still, he moved forward - walking, sniffing, digging a bit, avoiding a passing creature, walking some more.

Though the forest was rather expansive, after four hours of fruitless searching, Nanaki felt more than discouraged. But it made perfect sense for Vincent to be here! Physically, most people couldn't even get to the Ancient Forest, and those who could knew better than to step inside, as the forest was very dangerous. It was the most logical location for him to be.

Then again...Vincent hadn't joined the party until they reached Nibelheim, a good time _after_ they had left this side of the continent. He also had stayed with Yuffie on the Highwind when the others had decided to explore the forest. Perhaps Vincent wouldn't have hidden himself here after all. He wouldn't have known its layout, or the forest's secrets.

Then Nanaki stopped walking suddenly, his lips lifting in a toothy grin.

_The forest's secrets._ Of course!

Without further delay, Nanaki turned on his heel and ran through the forest. Ignoring any creatures he haphazardly attracted, he dashed back towards Cosmo Canyon, wondering how fast he could schedule a flight to Bone Village.

* * *

Aya woke with a strong urge to urinate. Unzipping the tent, she decided to walk back to Bone Village so she could use their restroom, figuring that if she couldn't get inside to use the inn's bathroom this late at night, surely there were porta-potties for the campers outside.

Outside of the tent, she stretched, yawned, stretched again, then broke one of the glow sticks and set it on the ground by the tent to easily find her way back.

After shoving her socked feet into her boots, Aya stumbled back towards the inn. Her legs, still full from sleep, seemed to drag non-compliantly on the ground. Trudging forward, Aya paid no notice to the trees as she passed them by, her eyes now adjusted to the darkness of the forest.

She walked for what seemed like twenty minutes before stopping, more awake now, as she realized she should have already reached Bone Village.

All Aya could see was forest as she looked around. She must have gone the wrong way. With a sigh, Aya doubled back towards the tent.

The forest seemed to be completely still, there was no wind, no sound, as if she were simply walking in a black void. There was no sign of the tent. Not even of the glow stick she had just set outside of it. Aya told herself not to panic, and that she had just walked farther from the tent then she realized. Despite this, her body moved faster, jogging, and then running through the forest.

She ran hard, until she was gasping for breath, but she still maintained her speed. There was no way she wouldn't have reached the tent by now. No freaking way. She kept running - her boots crunching on the fallen twigs and leaves. Feeling her legs weaken, knees threatening to buckle, Aya came to a sudden halt, bent forward with hands braced on her knees, chest heaving.

Maybe she should have listened to the boy from the gift shop, but she couldn't see how a dinky, rusted lyre-harp could help. She looked around, turning herself in circles. This was ridiculous. She should be back at the tent. Aya would admit that she might have gone in the wrong direction when she tried to walk to Bone Village, but if she had turned directly around, like she did, walking back in the direction she came from, it would have been logically impossible for her to miss the tent. It was as if the trees had moved the entire camp away, but forests didn't just shift like that. No, she should _definitely_ be back at the tent.

...and then she was.

It was as if during the time it took for her to blink, Aya was suddenly transported back to her tent. She was standing just outside of it by the glow stick, as if she hadn't ever left.

"What the hell?" Aya muttered to herself. She walked over to the tent, and touched it just to make sure it was real. Yet even after touching it, she still questioned its existence. Why would touching the tent prove it to be more real? Her nose had been deceived by the scent of death when she first entered the forest, and just now it had seemed like she was running though the forest, when in fact she hadn't moved at all. Sensations Aya thought she had experienced in this forest all turned out to be false, so what made seeing, or touching the tent any different?

Aya shook her head quickly, as if the motion would forcibly expel the thought from her mind. The only place she could get by thinking like that was an asylum. If she kept thinking like that, she would start questioning the existence of everything in the forest, even herself.

Taking a deep breath, Aya could see the light of Bone Village from where she stood, and began to walk towards it again. She was tired, and she decided that her mind was playing vicious, vicious tricks on her. Yet despite this, Aya stopped and turned to walk sideways so that she could watch the tent. If that previous bit of confusion _was_ because of the forest, Aya felt more confident this time that she had outsmarted it - now she could watch the tent, and then catch occasional glimpses of Bone Village at the same time.

Aya turned her head back towards Bone Village, and then quickly looked towards the tent. Everything was still good. She took several more steps then looked again, but was not able to get a clear enough view. The next time, she twisted slightly more, then stopped walking and turned completely.

Bone Village was gone, and as she whipped around towards the tent, she saw that it was gone as well.

But that was impossible. She was just looking at both of them less than seconds ago. She was positive!

Then, somehow, she was back at the camp again, standing just between the tent and the glow stick, like last time.

Aya plopped to the ground, cross-legged and frustrated. What in the heck was going on? Both Bone Village and the tent had been visible, and then suddenly they had vanished. But as soon as she had stopped, calmed herself down, and thought about it rationally, she appeared back at the tent again, or so she thought.

Stay calm, she told herself, rocking slightly as she thought. The forest was enchanted after all, of that Aya was now positive. There had to be some kind of trick to it, a way to bypass the forest's magic - something that the Lunar Harp had in its possession by simply existing. If the warning signs had been telling the truth, a traveler merely had to possess the Lunar Harp to travel through the woods; they didn't have to do anything special with it.

You can do this, Aya thought to herself. Just figure out the trick. What's so special about this Harp anyway? You did it last time; you can do it again...

"Again?" she muttered. This was the first time she had ever been here, so where did that thought come from? Sure, the forest seemed familiar, but only in the sense that it had a lot of trees and bushes like every other forest. Nothing more.

Though Aya was lost in thought, she gradually began to hear something in the distance. Believing it to be nothing more than the rustling of the leaves from the wind, she ignored it, and settled back to her thoughts. But as the sound became louder, clearer, Aya found herself completely focused on it.

That definitely was not the wind.

Aya sprang to her feet, preparing herself for some type of animal to spring out at her, like a wolf, or maybe something more like a snake. Come to think of it, the sound did resemble slithering...or something dragging itself across the ground... Maybe it was just an injured animal that was limping and meant her no harm? The way her luck was going, she doubted it.

Still, Aya wished she had a weapon...like a sledgehammer. A sledgehammer would be good. Even the pocket knife that was inside the survival kit would be an improvement, but Aya was too afraid to move towards the tent, lest she provoke the creature to attack. On the other hand, if she were to stay perfectly still, the animal would see that Aya meant it no harm, and ignore her and go away. It would ignore her, wouldn't it?

Aya noticed something moving in her peripheral vision, and cautiously turned her head towards it. Something was indeed coming towards her, but it was so small she could barely make it out. She would have thought it an enormous insect if not for a very distinctive glow...

Aya watched the object as it pulled itself forward along the ground, and felt her throat clutch in horror. It was the necklace that Kyoko had given her. The necklace that she had thrown into the ocean. And it was dragging itself right towards her.

Aya shrieked and ran to the side, away from the direction the stone had been heading, then watched as it hesitated and changed direction - pulling itself in her direction again.

Tears filled Aya's eyes as she backed away, blurring her vision. She mumbled incoherently before she turned and fled.

She ran as fast as she could, not daring to look back, darting through trees and brush, yet the sound still seemed to be getting closer.

Aya turned to see how close the thing was, and saw the tent still sitting directly behind her - the stone still pushing through the gravel, rolling towards her feet.

But she had been running! She had watched trees passed by, and yet it was if she had never moved at all.

"Get away from me!" Aya screamed as the stone. "Just stop it! Stop rolling!"

The tears came harder, rolling down her cheeks. Aya's legs gave out, and she crumbled to the ground; dirt caked beneath her nails as she quickly forced herself to sit up.

She crawled backwards away from the stone, breathing so frantically that she was near passing out when the stone suddenly stopped moving.

It was about an arm's length away, and Aya prepared herself for it to do something - to fly at her face, or to grow teeth and chomp on her hand. Neither would have surprised her at this point. But, she knew it would do _something_. She had seen too many movies for this sort of thing to catch her off guard.

Aya stayed planted, her weight on her hands, elbows locked and cutting circulation to her arms, so that she was losing feeling in her fingertips. The only thing that moved was her chest as she heaved in and out, trying to keep from sobbing and making anymore noise.

She sat there.

Sat there some more.

Sat. Sat. Sat.

Nothing.

It felt like she had been sitting like that for over an hour, and Aya would have believed this all to be nothing more than a horrible dream if her eyes weren't so sore from tying not to blink. She couldn't feel her arms at all, and the awkward position was giving her cramps in her legs. This pain was definitely real.

After waiting this long, Aya was tempted to tell the stone to just get on with it already. Tentatively, she sat up completely, rubbing her arms to increase the blood flow.

The stone didn't move, yet Aya sat there. Waiting. And, when that yielded nothing, she got to her knees, and reached her hand out slowly. Her shaking fingertips barely brushed the stone before she quickly pulled her hand back.

Still nothing.

Aya started to inch away from it, but the moment she did, the stone rolled forward again to cover the distance. Aya scrambled to her feet to jump back farther, but it kept rolling forward.

With her foot, Aya delivered a swift kick and sent it skidding away from her. Without hesitation, it rolled back.

Regardless of what she did, it seemed like the evil little thing would come back to her. But what was also peculiar was that before when she left the tent it had disappeared completely until she somehow was brought back, yet when the stone was present and she tried to run she couldn't get _away_ from the tent.

To test it again, she kicked the stone harder, watched as it sailed away, then turned and ran the opposite direction. After several seconds of running, Aya turned, already expecting to see both the tent and the stone behind her, but she was also greeted by something else.

Someone was crouched by her tent, watching her. Inhaling sharply, Aya ran from the person, nearly falling over herself in a panic as she did so, before realizing that she would not get anywhere.

She whipped around to still see the tent behind her, but the person was gone; there was no sight of them anywhere. Was the person really there to begin with, or was it another of the forest's tricks? Aya's heart felt like it would burst out of her chest, and she couldn't seem to catch her breath. She scanned the area, but saw nothing.

What had the person even looked like? From the size, it seemed to be a male, though he was crouching down, so she couldn't be sure. Even if it had been a man, Aya was not paying attention enough to notice any details before she ran. The only thing she could recall was that his chest was bare, and appeared to be seriously wounded, and that the brightness of his eyes seemed almost demonic, although that might have been simply an affect of the glow stick on the ground.

Aya's eyes darted to where the man had been. Dark blood splattered the ground where he had stood, but did even that prove he was real?. This did not bode well with Aya. She had no idea what was going on, but she needed to get the hell out of this forest. Thankfully, she now had a pretty good idea of how to go about it.

With a careful hand, Aya stooped down to gingerly pick up the necklace which rested by her feet, as it was now was much less terrifying than the man. It was a bit surprising to see the clasp of the necklace still broken; if it had magically been repaired, Aya would not have been fazed in the least. She loosely held the necklace out in front of her, between her index finger and thumb, the stone dangling from the broken chain.

Not knowing what result her plan would bring, Aya shoved the necklace into her pocket, climbed back into the tent, and grabbed both sets of bags, the pocket knife, and the three unopened glow-sticks, and started walking towards the light of the town.

She walked forward and forward, following light, but she was no longer sure it was from Bone Village - the light never got any closer, but never moved farther away. Aya wondered if this was just a new trick from the forest, but she continued to walk straight.

In her mind, Aya had reasoned that the presence of the necklace made it so she was wherever _it_ was in the forest - so if the necklace moved forward geographically, she would too, and somehow bypass the forest's magic. Truthfully, she didn't know if it would work, but it was the best idea she had.

Through the woods, the path changed as the trees opened into a hollow. The sky was black save for a sliver of moon and a few stars. A clear pathway trailed through a hollow tree, large enough for a grown man to walk through, which had fallen, or perhaps had been strategically placed, over a small cliff to connect it to the opposite side.

Aya was slightly apprehensive to walk through it - most important was the fact that she had definitely _not_ walked through that on the way from town, so it was rather safe to conclude that she was going in the wrong direction. And aside from that, she doubted that the over-sized log would even hold her weight.

Though she debated on whether or not to continue, Aya realized that from this location, the light seemed significantly closer. If it was not from Bone Village, it might have been from another town, or a large cabin of sorts. And, as Aya didn't know where Bone Village was in relation to her current location, she didn't want to risk turning around and losing whatever she _was _near.

Working up her courage, Aya walked through the hollowed tree as fast as she dared, and then stopped dead in her tracks. Something had become visible now that Aya had crossed through the log - no more than fifty feet from where she stood was a massive heap of something, perhaps a dead animal, on the ground.

Slowly, Aya walked towards the thing. As she got closer, she realized how large this animal was, and that it was not an animal at all, but a _person_.

She stopped moving. Heart pounding in her chest, Aya was reminded of her experience with the stone in her pocket, as she sat still and waited for it to make a move, yet there was something much more horrifying about the situation now. It was as if the fear she was feeling had been completely ingrained in her, something primal that was both holding her back, and pushing her forward at the same time, and her feet began to move her forward.

Deep in her mind, Aya knew it had to be the man she had seen earlier. The only other option was obviously that it was someone else. That thought frightened Aya even more, and her mind raced with the possible options. And still her body was pushed ahead.

Now she was only several feet away. From this short distance, Aya could discern much more about the body. From the sheer size, now that she could clearly see it, the person had to be a male, although they appeared to have very long hair. The color was ambiguous because of the darkness, but it seemed light, perhaps blonde. He was lying face down on the ground, and wore nothing but pants and shoes.

From this angle, Aya couldn't tell if he was the same injured man she had seen from earlier. She couldn't recall anything about his hair, his clothing, or his size. The only things she remembered were his eyes, and the mass of blood on his chest and arms.

The man seemed to be unconscious, for he did not move even when Aya stood less than a foot away from him. Kneeling down beside him, Aya contemplated what to do.

When she had first seen the man, he had scared her out of her wits by popping up so suddenly. Though she wasn't sure if he had left the tent of his own free will, or if the forest had moved him, he didn't try to harm her while he was there. Perhaps he was just as lost in this forest as she was, and had been attacked by something? He might have needed help, and instead she ran from him.

Not that she didn't have good reason at the time.

Aya placed a hand on his bare shoulder; it was warm beneath her fingertips and moist with sweat. He was breathing softly, and Aya's hand rose and fell slightly along with his shoulder with each breath

There was only one way to tell whether or not this was the same man. Aya leaned over his body, and placing one hand on his shoulder and the other on his waist, gently rolled him over towards her.

She looked first at his chest and arms, covered in severe gashes and lacerations. He was bleeding quite profusely, and leaves and grass were stuck onto his chest. Aya made a motion to remove them, wondering briefly how he had gotten so injured, but froze as her eyes reached his face.

Then Aeris Gainsbrough remembered.


	7. DELIRIUM: Explicit Memory

_"Do you think she'll remember?"_

_"I don't know."_

_"What if it's not her?"_

_"It's her."_

_"But what if it's not?"_

_"You're not convinced?"_

_"I'm not saying it's not possible. It's just not likely. I've lived with her for the past four years. She doesn't remember anything."_

_"She will. She's in Glorantha, isn't she? If there was a place for her to remember, it would be in Glorantha. And when she does, she can tell us how to bring Her back."_

_"And the Emperor too?"_

_"Yes, in due time."_

_"But what if she doesn't remember? What if even Glorantha isn't enough?"_

_"Then the forest will swallow her, and she will die with all the rest of them."_

**DELIRIUM: Explicit Memory**

* * *

Her confidence was fleeting. Or perhaps it was never really there to begin with - Aeris wasn't sure. The serene structures of her ancestors, brought to life from nature, served no purpose on her nerves. As Aeris knelt upon the altar in the heart of the Ancient City, her entire body was trembling. It would have been better if she hadn't known she was going to die. If instead she had been under the delusion that she could stroll in, summon Holy - thus thwarting Sephiroth's oh-so-evil plan - and leave. One of those 'all in a day's work' kind of things. Now she was so nervous that she doubted she could summon Holy at all, and sat back down on the stone floor.

Aeris found it amusing that regardless of knowing about her imminent death, she couldn't believe she was really going to die. This all felt like a dream - perhaps a part of the same reassuring dream she sent to Cloud. Her trembling body knew it better than her mind.

Of course, being on this altar in the City of the Ancients felt all the more surreal because Aeris had seen it before -- seen the altar, and seen her death, many times in her dreams as an outsider. Aeris watched herself die, but never experienced death as Sephiroth killed her dream-self.

Sitting on the cold stone, she momentarily wondered if the real thing would hurt: would it be a quick and painless end? Or would she writhe in pain, begging for it to be over? The dreams were never specific enough in that regard, and would end the moment Sephiroth's sword met her back.

Aeris exhaled deeply, stood, and stepped toward the stone railing surrounding the circumference of the altar. She leaned against it, and watched the water below her. Though this place was underground and wind could not reach it, the cerulean liquid seemed alive.

_Maybe I won't actually die_, Aeris mused half heartedly, as she watched the ebb and flow of the water along the edge of the platform she had just come from. Death was always just assumed, but the dream never made it explicit. After all, Aeris was sure people had suffered serious injuries before and lived, and with her healing abilities... But the possibility of Sephiroth missing her vital organs was absurd, and even _she_ couldn't heal a wound like that. No, she would definitely die.

Stop wasting time, she told herself.

Aeris watched the crystalline staircase that led above her, secretly hoping for Cloud to come bounding down them to rescue her, but then she imagined quite another image - in the place of a man with a head full of sunkissed spikes was a man with hair the color of moonlight, clad in a midnight cloak, who blasphemed the hallowed ground of her ancestors with each black-booted footstep.

With that image firmly in place, Aeris hurried herself back towards the center of the altar, knelt down, clasped her hands together, and prayed for a miracle.

Summoning Holy was an awkward and difficult process. It required perfect control of spiritual energy for a long duration of time. The flow of energy had to be completely balanced and constant. The slightest increase or decrease could botch

Aeris' mother, Ifalna, had told her how to summon Holy when she was a child, though Aeris didn't know what she was talking about until long after. As Ifalna lay dying on the steps of Sector 7's train platform, she had given Aeris the white materia, saying, "Imagine – draw a circle in your mind. As dark as you can, as heavy as you can, that's best. Then imagine yourself throwing your whole body in towards the center," with no further explanation. When Aeris asked what it was for, "You will know," was all her mother replied.

That's how I need to begin, Aeris thought, and then that must be maintained for a long length of time. How much time, Aeris didn't know, but hoped that when she was successful, she would be able to feel it. Aeris assumed that summoning Holy would be all the more difficult for her as she had virtually no proper Cetran training, yet she knew it must be done, and so it was.

For two hours, Aeris maintained the spell. With eyes closed, she focused upon placing her entire being into that imagined dark circle, continued to place all of her spiritual energy into Holy, until she could feel it pulling away from her, as if the physical space surrounding her was floating away, and she was left in its ether. Aeris was exhausted and light-headed as she completed the spell, and her body felt sluggish and heavy, though the overall effect of the exertion had caused to her feel very relaxed and tranquil.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, knowing from her dreams to expect Cloud, and she was not disappointed. He stood several feet in front of her, his face stoic, but in his eyes she could see confusion, fear, and Sephiroth. Cloud looked above her, and then pain - pain and a massive pressure, as flesh and organs were cut and pushed aside to make room for the steel blade. Heat gathered around the pressure beneath her skin. Her eyes watered. The force of the impact pushed the air from her lungs. The tips of her fingers became cold, as well as her nose, and her toes, as if all her heat were pooling to where Sephiroth's sword was.

Aeris could feel Sephiroth behind her: the heat emanating off his body, the leather of his coat brushing her arms which had involuntarily dropped to her sides. With hazy eyes, Aeris looked down at the sword protruding from her belly, spellbound with the swirls and tendrils of blood as it created designs against the steel before dripping to the floor.

Her fascination seemed to pull her upper body forwards, and she felt herself slouch against the tip of the sword. The screams and cries of her friends sounded distant, muted. Then, suddenly, the sword was being removed - as if Sephiroth had sadistically waited for her body to become accustomed to its presence before extracting it. She felt a pressure on her back, his foot, and gagged on her own pain as he withdrew the sword ever so slowly.

This had all happened within seconds, but it was taking too long. All Aeris wanted now was to die and have it be over with. She had summoned Holy, done her life's work, what use was there in prolonging the event? Time was fading, and she found herself in Cloud's arms. She didn't have the strength to open her eyes, but she knew it was him. She could hear him screaming. It took every ounce of energy for Aeris to open her eyes. All she could see was the blurred image of Cloud as he held her, and an equally faded Sephiroth, arms outstretched in triumph. Or so he thought.

Content in knowing that, at the very least, she had prevented Meteor from destroying the planet, for the last time in this life, Aeris closed her eyes...

..._and then_...

...she opened them again.

She was on a flat surface lying on her side, and by the mass of trees around her, she assumed in a forest. Was this an afterlife? Not that she was expecting the stereotypical clouds and white light experience, but this forest felt too...alive. _She_ felt too alive. Her hand flew to her stomach. There was no pain, no wound; the fabric was still intact, though it felt oddly stiff, and the texture was all wrong. Well if there was no wound, she must be dead, and it would figure that the afterlife would screw up the feeling of her dress.

Aeris idly stroked along the fabric, disappointed. It was loose, and the neckline was too high and...why were there short sleeves? Aeris frowned. She pulled at the sleeve and looked down at her hand, as if seeing it would somehow clarify everything. Aeris was even more surprised by what she saw. Her fingernails were painted a gaudy shade of purple, and beneath her hand, the cloth there did not belong to the bubblegum pink sundress she was used to, but to a black t-shirt. She needed to get up.

Shifting her weight, Aeris pushed herself up on her hands and into a crouching position. She was either in some really screwed up afterlife, or she was dreaming, because there was no way this was real. She didn't even own purple nail polish, or the black jeans and shirt she was wearing, and what in the hell was going on anyway?!

Aeris looked around. There were suitcases and a dying glow stick in front of her. To the left was forest. To the right - forest. And directly behind? Sephiroth.

Aeris shrieked, and scrambledaway from him until there was well over two yards of distance between them. She sat perfectly still, aside from her trembling, with her eyes trained on him. Aeris barely had time to wonder about this new development when the memories came. They were slow at first – flashing images associated with meaning: she was in the Enchanted Forest. Stuck at Bone Village. Kyoko was missing. Trip to Costa del Sol. Talk with Red. The flashes began to increase in speed, more dense and scattered, raping her mind, tracing back and back, like a time bomb ticking back to zero. She was Aya Urikawa, college graduate, who had a falling out with her family over finances. She was twenty, then sixteen, then five, then three.

And the images stopped, and Aeris remembered this life, as if twenty-one years had been packed into an instant. During the onslaught, she had collapsed onto the ground again. Her head throbbed, and her throat was raw...had she been screaming? She didn't know. Aeris picked herself back up, and wiped at her tears, unknowlingly smearing dirt across her face during the process. She didn't understand – she had been dying, and now here she was: back in the Enchanted Forest with a lifetime of someone else's memories...

...with Sephiroth.

Her head snapped in his direction. He was lying on his back the ground. Bleeding heavily from several large gashes in his torso and arms, it would seem. He was wearing only his pants and boots; he did not move.

Wherever this place was, it was not any sort of afterlife. Aeris' heart pounded in her chest - alive - but in someone else's body, with someone else's memories. She watched Sephiroth as he breathed peacefully, completely ignorant to her turmoil, and silently cursed him. This was his doing. She knew it; somehow _he_ did this to her - caused her to be here. And there he was in his happy slumber without a care in the world. Well, aside from his bleeding quite profusely...still, he needed to get up and tell her what the hell was going on, because he most definitely had something to do with this.

On shaky legs, Aeris stood and walked slowly over to Sephiroth.

He was a lot bigger than she remembered, and as much as she needed to know what was going on, she really did not want this sociopath to be conscious. Standing merely a foot away from him, but far enough so that he couldn't easily grab her if he suddenly sprang to life, Aeris cleared her throat. "H-hey," she squeaked. Her face grew hot with embarrassment – she meant to say it a lot more confidently, but it hardly came out that way. Thankfully, it didn't seem like he heard her.

Taking a deep breath, Aeris tried again with more conviction: "Hey!" Still, Sephiroth did not move, save for his breathing.

Aeris huffed and shifted her weight from foot to foot. Why wasn't he moving? Weren't all the great warriors supposed to be light sleepers to know when an enemy was approaching? Even Cloud was easier to wake up when he had fallen through the roof in the church in Sector 5. This thought momentarily arrested her, Aeris began to wonder if Cloud and the rest of AVALANCHE were all right. She desperately wanted to tell them that she was alive, and was as well as could be expected with an unconscious Sephiroth close by, but she didn't seem to have her PHS, and as much as she wanted to think about Cloud and the others, waking the insanely creepy man in front of her was, unfortunately, top priority.

"Sephiroth? Hello!" Aeris placed her hands on her hips, and walked to where his feet were. She thought briefly of leaning down to shake him, but thought better of it. Gently, she nudged one his booted feet with her own, and then skitted back, waiting for him to spring awake at the sensation, but he did nothing. Her mind flitted back to a memory of Aya's and her experience with the necklace as she sat and waited for it to spring towards her. Though Aeris remembered that event quite clearly, and how terrifying it had been for Aya, this was infinitely worse. She would much rather have a tiny bauble attack her than the hulking, terrifying mass that was Sephiroth.

Bouncing on the balls of her feet, Aeris relented, frustrated, and kicked the sole of Sephiroth's boot, hard.

"Oh, come on. Just wake up," she said.

Needing answers, and not knowing what else to do, Aeris prepared to sit down right where she was and wait for the bastard to regain consciousness.

* * *

The forest's entrance smelled of death.

The scent permeated through the woods, and with a Lunar Harp replica inside of his leather satchel, Nanaki entered, pressing his nose to the ground to determine where it was the strongest.

After several paces, he stopped. It was only about ten feet in, but the smell was unbelievably concentrated in this area. Without a second thought, Nanaki began to dig.

When Nanaki had arrived at Bone Village, the sun had already set, and the gift shop was preparing to close. Though the boy at the counter was reluctant to stay open a few moments longer, he was quite persuaded when Nanaki asked for a Lunar Harp, regardless of price.

Nanaki quickly purchased a Lunar Harp, grimacing at the cost inflation, and promptly ran out towards the forest. He worried that Vincent would be miles deep inside, hidden carefully away, but as Nanaki neared the forest, he knew that was not the case.

Nanaki continued to dig, using his claws to pull away rocks and dirt, and push them behind him. He panted heavily from the exertion, no longer used to such physical activity. Yet despite his tired body, his mind was like that of a pup again. He was undeniably thrilled at the thought of seeing Vincent, and couldn't wait to speak with him. Nanaki tried to remind himself that this was business related, but that didn't dissuade his excitement.

After hours of digging, there was no sign of Vincent. Nanaki sat inside of the crater that he had created, nearly five feet below the surface. His nose was dry, and he couldn't seem to stop panting. Perhaps he should have brought water with him, and food of some sort? Nanaki shook his head. Now was not the time to be thinking of that He needed to keep digging. Vincent was here. He was sure of it.

Standing up, Nanaki resumed digging, faster and faster, claws tearing through the earth, until they caught hard on something. Nanaki quickly removed his paw from it, then pressed his nose to the ground and sniffed.

With a yap of excitement, Nanaki used his snout to gingerly push away the soil. Snorting to clear the dirt from his nostrils, Nanaki whispered loudly, "Vincent!"

Nanaki was standing on Vincent's body, which was still covered in dirt, and using his nose, Nanaki nudged Vincent's face.

Vincent's eyes flashed open, red and bright as ever in the darkness, gazing skyward. Aside from that, he did not move, and Nanaki wasn't sure that he was even conscious.

"Vincent?"

The man's eyes slowly drifted towards Nanaki, and held him there.

"Vincent, it's me. Nanaki... Red…XIII."

"Move."

Nanaki eagerly jumped off the man, and sat by his side, his tail involuntarily wagging with excitement.

Vincent, clad in exactly the same garments (Nanaki wondered how they had survived for over 500 years), sat up slowly. Dirt tumbled down Vinecent's chest, though he seemed more preoccupied with his thigh, bloody from where Nanaki's claws had caught him. Nanaki followed Vincent's line of vision.

"Sorry about that," he said. "I was in a bit of a rush."

"It will heal," Vincent responded, his voice distant, as if he were musing to himself rather than offering a response. He stood up, and more dirt fell back to the ground, though clumps of it remained in his hair. His cape and clothing were threadbare, torn in many places, and caked with earth. Dirt was smeared upon his face, but Vincent made no motion to clean himself off.

For the first time, Vincent looked at Nanaki, and seemed to really notice him. He said nothing at first, then closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. Opening his eyes slowly as he exhaled, Vincent said, "How long has it been?"

"It's been over five-hundred years," Nanaki replied. "About five-hundred eighteen to be exact."

Vincent nodded, and said nothing, lost in reverie.

"Vincent," Nanaki said, urgency lacing his voice. "Something is going on. There are things I need to tell you."

The man remained silent, then effortlessly turned and climbed out of the crater Nanaki had created, the beast following closely on his heels. Once out of the large hole, Vincent surveyed the forest, before his crimson eyes focused on Nanaki, and he said, "How did you find me?"

"It wasn't easy," Nanaki said, and waited for Vincent to respond. When he didn't, Nanaki explained: "Initially I had gone to the Ancient Forest. But then I realized that you had never been there before; you wouldn't have known how to get through it. The Enchanted Forest on the other hand--"

"No, it was something else that led you here."

Nanaki hesitated before saying, "Well, yes. Something you said... When we had walked through here before, you said that this forest was the perfect place for someone to lose themself in. At the time, I thought you meant it was an easy place for someone to get lost in. It didn't occur to me that getting lost was the intention."

Vincent nodded thoughtfully. "Why did you come?"

Here, Nanaki used his paw to push the leather satchel over his head, and it landed on the ground with a muted pat. Nudging the satchel open, he motioned to its contents. "These newspaper clippings will catch you up to speed."

Vincent knelt down and picked up the satchel, but instead of looking at the articles, he pulled the drawstring, and placed the purse back around Nanaki's neck. He stayed in that position, crouched low to the ground, and said, "I want to hear it from you."

* * *

Aeris wasn't sure how long she had been waiting. What felt like hours might only have been several minutes, and her lack of patience wasn't helping. She drummed her fingers intensely on the ground, and when that didn't work to calm her nerves, she resorted to pacing.

Every couple of steps she paused, questioning her own actions as she looked at the now bandaged Sephiroth. Aeris scowled, and then continued walking even faster than before. Why did she heal him? Sure, it made sense at the time: he brought her here, he was dying (probably), and she wanted answers. Answers didn't come from corpses. Healing him seemed like the logical thing.

After deciding that Sephiroth was no good to her dead (at least for now), Aeris had searched through both her and Kyoko's luggage, and, not having the heart to use Kyoko's clothing for bandages, Aeris used her own, or, rather, she used _Aya's. _Though the pairs of jean shorts were rather useless, there were several tank tops and t-shirts that could very easily be turned into makeshift bandages with the pocket knife from the Survival Kit. Thankfully, there were two black sweatshirts within the pile of beach clothing, one of which Aeris had put on, the other she had tied around her waist for later.

With the strips of fabric on her lap, Aeris knelt down next to Sephiroth. She huffed. The situation was actually quite humorous,Aeris thought bitterly. Watch Aeris as she heals the bastard who killed her...theoretically, anway...no less than an hour ago. It was that thought which kept her more annoyed than afraid.

Bandage in hand, Aeris mentally prepared herself to put it on Sephiroth, but hesitated. The blood on his chest hadn't begun to coagulate yet; it flowed down the sides of his ribs and onto the grass. Looking now, Aeris could see that the knees of her pants were soaked with blood. She placed a hand onto his chest by the base of his neck. His skin felt warm, and sticky with sweat, and a part of Aeris was repulsed by this mere contact. Sephiroth breathed haggardly through his mouth; his hair was matted against his face with perspiration, and seemed a dull and lifeless gray, so unlike the near-luminous silver she had memorized from her nightmares. Observing this, Aeris severely doubted the bandages on her lap would be enough, as he would probably just bleed through them.

Aeris slid her hand lower on his chest so that it rested just beneath his ribcage and focused. The faintest of breezes surrounded her, but it was not even enough to rustle her clothing. Aeris groaned. The healing spell she was once so easily able to conjure now seemed impossible to cast. Was it because she was in someone else's body?

She tried again. This time, the wind was enough to gently puff out her bangs, but nothing more. Aeris looked at Sephiroth's chest. The bleeding had slowed considerably, and some of the lighter cuts on his arms were beginning to scab. At least it was an improvement. Still, it upset her that a spell, which once would have been able to fully heal all but maybe some of the wounds on Sephiroth's chest, could now do little more than scab a wound. Now she felt exhausted - this body was obviously not used to manipulating spiritual energy, and though Aeris had the knowledge required to do it, this body pulled against her. All the more reason to heal that bastard and get some answers, Aeris thought, and she set to work on wrapping the bandages.

Thirty minutes later, and Aeris was pacing so quickly that she was getting short of breath. She swung her arms, locked at the elbows and with hands clenched into fists, so that she looked like a horribly undisciplined soldier, stomping her feet as she marched. She couldn't believe this was happening to her. Hadn't she been through enough already? And Sephiroth, the jerk, he would probably get the utmost enjoyment out of her ire if he could see her now.

Aeris thought of what she wanted to say to him when he woke, so angry now that the possibility of him killing her again didn't even cross her mind. Aeris played out the scene in her head, starting with him waking up as she stood over him, arms crossed and unafraid. She would demand to know what was going on, and, of course, he would immediately fess up. And if he tried anything, anything at all, to hurt her, Cloud and the others would come charging back to save her, because they knew in their heart of hearts that she was still alive and where she would be.

With that thought, Aeris nodded to herself, believing that while that all might be a bit of a stretch, it still sounded very plausible. Now all she needed was to patiently stand over Sephiroth and wait, and as she turned to do just that, she nearly tripped over herself as she saw that not only was Sephiroth already sitting up, but those florescent eyes were focused directly on her.

She froze.

Sephiroth looked at Aeris for a moment with an expression that said he was either very bored, or very tired. This look didn't last long as he then focused on himself and his injuries. He traced a hand down his chest, and paused to look at each of his arms. Sephiroth glanced around him, and then stood up slowly. If he felt the pain from his wounds, his face did not betray it as his expression remained stoic, and even though his movements were slow and calculated, they were nonetheless graceful.

Aeris began to wonder how he might have gotten the injuries to begin with. While she was healing him, she hadn't even given it a second thought. Thinking of it now, the inguries must have been from Cloud, who would have attacked Sephiroth after he killed her. Sephiroth, being injured, probably fled back into the Enchanted Forest to escape.

All of that was fine and dandy, except for the fact of her being here, and now here he was going about his way and acting as though the woman he had just killed _wasn't_ standing right in front of him. Aside from his first initial gaze, Sephiroth had not acknowledged her presence at all!

With arms folded across her chest, she said, "Cloud's doing?" feeling both anxious and relieved when he turned to acknowledge her.

This time he did not look away, and instead began to focus on her so intently that Aeris found it impossibly difficult to look him in the eye, and had to mentally force herself to keep it up. His once impassive face now changed slightly: his brows just barely furrowed in what looked to be confusion, as if he was just now realizing who she was. It just made Aeris all the more furious. She sighed exaggeratedly, waiting for him to say something, anything, even just a grunt, but he did nothing. Just stood and focused on her.

Aeris tapped her fingers nervously against her arms as she waited, until finally she had had enough, and threw her arms down to her sides, hands clenched into fists. "You did this," she quickly spat out.

He didn't move, didn't even blink. Just watched her as if she had said nothing.

"You did _this_," she said again, opening her arms and motioning to her surroundings to emphasize, "didn't you?"

His head tilted to the side, and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly into a smirk.

Aeris scowled. He was amused. That bastard thought this was funny. His being entertained by this only further proved his guilt. He _was _responsible.

"How did you do it?" She asked, but he still didn't answer. With a huff, she said, "Why are you even here?"

"_Me_?"

The sudden sound of his voice startled Aeris. Its timbre deeper and more menacing than she remembered. When she hid behind Cloud and the others in the basement of Nibelheim, he was much easier to confront, and even kneeling on the altar, she didn't have to see him, but now that she was alone, and stood face to face with him at such a short distance, Aeris finally realized the danger she could be in if she somehow managed to set this man off (which was, presumably, a rather easy task). This was _Sephiroth - _the same man who razed the battlegrounds in Wutai, who massacred the people of Nibelheim, and mercilessly slaughtered ShinRa employees and herself without a second thought.

She tried to maintain her resolve, despite her now quaking arms, and focus on what he had said. The small inflection in his voice as he spoke that one syllable said plenty to her. In it seemed a hidden retort: What do you mean what am _I_ doing here? What are _you_ doing here?

"Yes," she replied, trying to keep her voice steady. "Yes, _you_. Why are _you_ still here?"

"I would imagine for the same reason as you," he said coolly, without hesitation, as if it should be obvious.

Aeris opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again. What the hell did that even MEAN!? She was here because...well, she didn't know, but she was some how transported here instead of dying. Whereas he should be off gallivanting and summoning Meteor, and doing whatever other evil things he wanted. He should _not_ still be in the Enchanted Forest, unless, of course, she was right to assume that he fled here after Cloud's attack and passed out. Not that that bastard would ever own up to it.

"Was it because Cloud attacked you?" she offered, not even waiting for a response before saying sternly, "Why did you bring me here? You did this, I know you did -- and I want to know why."

Sephiroth's face darkened. His fragment of a smile disappeared, leaving a deep scowl, and his once nonchalant demeanor now seemed on the offensive. This sudden change frightened Aeris. So much for not setting him off. Even without his sword, and injured, normal Sephiroth was still quite imposing; an angry Sephiroth was downright terrifying.

He glared at her, and as Aeris prepared herself for the worst, Sephiroth suddently said, "Figure it out yourself," then pivoted and began to walk away.

Aeris watched as Sephiroth's figure slinked away, and as it did so, she panicked. "You can't just leave!" She blurted out, thinking that if he left, she would never receive an answer to her questions.

Sephiroth stopped and turned slowly. "Really?"

Aeris quickly rumaged her brain for a reason to stay. "I...I saved you!" she blurted out. "You owe me an explanation!"

Sephiroth made a noise very much like a grunt, the closest thing he would make to an actual chuckle. "That's ridiculous."

Aeris planted her hands on her hips. "I suppose you think those bandages just appeared out of nowhere, then? If it wasn't for me, you would have bled to death. You should be thanking me."

Sephiroth looked down at the makeshift bandages. He began to unravel the black cloth around his left forearm deliberately slow. Beneath the blood-soaked cloth, the skin was completely unmarred, as if there had never been any injury.

"Hmm," he hummed wistfully, before shrugging and actually rewrapping the bandage around his arm. A small grin tugged at his lips.

"But I..." Aeris said, and her voice faded. It just made no sense! Why, when she seemed so unable to get Sephiroth to _stop_ bleeding, was he now fully healed! "Y-You were..." she tried again, but stopped as Sephiroth turned once again and started to walk away. "Wait," she breathed, but he walked on without faltering - he either didn't hear her, or didn't care, and as his figure became smaller in the distance, Aeris slumped to the ground. It was probably the latter.

* * *

"Delirium is a disease of the night."  
_- Billy Wilder_

* * *

****

Author's Notes:

Happy holidays to everyone!! Thought I'd give you all a Christmas present with the first part of the DELIRIUM section. Sorry it's taken so long to update - I've been busy with college and getting things ready to study abroad in Japan starting in January (YAY!!). Thanks to everyone that continues to read and review (the reviews really help to keep things in perspective) - you guys rock my socks. Special thanks goes to Storyteller in Silence for continuing to edit for me. Maybe after visiting me, you'll work on your own story some more, ne? 

Random note: The directions Ifalna gives to Aeris about how to summon Holy are actually the directions given to Ichigo (from Bleach) about using the spirit ball thingy. Hee.

Take care everyone!

VB


	8. DELIRIUM: Woods are Exalted Dreams

_"'It is when the earth is covered by Her magic that She will build a City of Power upon Glorantha, and her devout followers will be eternally reincarnated.'"_

_"I've read that before."_

_"I'm just reminding you how important this is."_

_"Look, I know it's important, all right? Stop lecturing me."_

_"It's not a lecture, it's a warning. Don't screw this up."_

**DELIRIUM: Woods are Exalted Dreams**

* * *

This girl looked almost nothing like the Cetra that he killed. As Sephiroth walked away from her deeper into the Enchanted Forest, he pondered this, leaving the subject of his thoughts sobbing quietly on the ground.

That Cetra should have been nothing more than a pile of bones wasting away in the Ancient City, and yet here she was - some strange-looking version of her anyway - blaming him for…what exactly? For being here with her? For merely existing? This wasn't exactly a part of his plan, either.

When Sephiroth was trapped in the Lifestream for all those centuries, he wanted nothing more but to escape. He gave no thought to anything else – not to where he would go when he got out, or what he would do, and especially not to who he would be with at the time. If the Cetra was upset with him for being within her vicinity, than it was all the better for him, as Sephiroth had no desire to be near her either. He was just as surprised to see her there as she was him, yet there was something peculiar about her reaction to him...

Sephiroth stopped walking and looked behind him. The girl was no longer crying, as far as he could tell. She was on her knees, arms wrapped around herself, head lowered, looking very much like a dog who had just been kicked.

Sephiroth reviewed their brief exchange in his head. What she had said and the way that she acted seemed off. It was understandable that she would be upset with her murderer, hate him even, but her words were filled with fresh emotion, not the residual bitterness of someone who had reflected on the past. Realizing this, Sephiroth made his way back toward her, stopping less than a foot away, and waited for her to acknowledge him.

If the girl was aware of his presence, she made no sign of it, and continued just to kneel in the dirt. Despite the darkness of the forest, Sephiroth could clearly see the girl as though it was as bright as day, and as he cleared his throat, he watched closely for any sort of acknowledgement, but she remained as still as stone. He briefly searched his mind for her name, but came up with nothing, and so he simply called her, "Cetra," and leaned forward as if to tap her shoulder.

The girl's head snapped up towards him at the sound of his voice. Her eyes were hopeful at first, but then grew afraid, as if she had been expecting someone else. She leaned back, trying to increase the distance between them, and Sephiroth immediately pulled away.

Now that the girl was looking at him, Sephiroth couldn't be sure of how close her resemblance to the Cetra was after all, for he had only seen what she looked like from far away – and after many centuries, even that memory had faded. He couldn't recall whether the Cetra wore the same garish makeup, which was smeared over this girl's face, along with a fair amount of dirt and grime, or if she too had stained her hair with streaks of crimson. All that he could clearly recall was that ridiculous pink dress, and how unsuited it was for travel. This girl was dressed from head to toe in black, appearing the exact opposite of the Cetra's attire…and yet, he suspected they were one and the same.

"What do you want?" She asked, her voice dead, barely audible.

Sephiroth lowered his head slightly, and though his eyes broke contact, there was the semblance of a smirk on his face. "Your friends are dead," he stated with ease. Sephiroth paused then, and waited for a reaction. When she gave him none, he continued to say, "The world is different from what you remember. Five hundred years have passed since our deaths."

The girl stared at him for a minute before frowning and shaking her head. She slowly stood up to face him, and as she did so, a strangled laugh forced its way from her throat. "So you're saying that five hundred years have passed since we died? That's interesting considering that we're both still here, _alive_. If you're going to lie, at least make it convincing."

"I'm not lying."

"I want the truth," she managed to say sternly, though her voice still wavered.

"The truth?" he said, a hint of mirth in his tone, though it did not reflect on his face. "It's interesting how everyone is always asking for the truth, and yet they always reject it when it's not the 'truth' they want to hear."

"This has nothing to do with what I want to hear!" she spat back, all fear from her voice now gone as it jumped several octaves. "It's about knowing the truth, not hearing more of your lies. Do you honestly expect me to believe that I've been – _somehow_ – thrust five-hundred years into the future, and placed oh-so-conveniently with you?"

"So instead, you choose to believe that I have lied to you?"

"I'm not choosing to believe anything! You're--"

"Try thinking of it like this, if you can," he said condescendingly, "all lies are truth until you know them to be lies. So really, by me telling you that five-hundred years have past, and that Strife and the others are now nothing more than a pile of dust, I've just saved you the trouble of discerning fact from falsity. You should be grateful to me."

The Cetra's face went slack for a moment, before rage infused her eyes. "Gra-grateful! _I_ should be grateful to _you_?" The girl's tiny frame trembled with anger, and she shook her head in disbelief. "You _murdered_ me, and countless others. I should be _grateful_…? I don't believe anything that you've said. You are nothing more than a sociopath who gets off on other's pain…" The girl's words faded when Sephiroth's eyes quickly caught her own, and she saw a flash of anger behind them.

"Truth is truth regardless of who tells it," Sephiroth replied evenly, but firmly. "You might not _like_ what I have told you, but the truth is what it is. What you choose to do with it is up to you."

Sephiroth made a motion to leave, but the girl wasn't finished: "Did you really come back just to tell me that?"

"You obviously didn't know. Your earlier reaction to me was proof enough of that."

"I would have figured it out on my own," she said indignantly, folding her arms across her chest, a feeble attempt to place a barrier between them. "I didn't need your help."

Sephiroth raised his brow. "And how long before then would you have been wandering aimlessly looking for your dead comrades?"

The girl said nothing for a moment, and actually seemed to consider his point. Then she huffed, and said, "Even if what you've said is true, it doesn't make up for what you did. I won't forgive you."

"I couldn't care less about your forgiveness, or anyone else's for that matter," Sephiroth said simply, and he had to repress a grin as the girl's mouth dropped.

"W-well…" she stammered, "well then why bother telling me? What does it matter to you whether or not I know the truth?"

"Because sincere ignorance can prove to be very dangerous."

The girl opened her mouth to speak, but closed it, clearly mulling over what Sephiroth had said. She might not have completely understood his meaning, but probably assumed that he was speaking from personal experience. Though, perhaps even that was thinking too highly of her.

This time, the Cetra stood quietly as Sephiroth turned and left her for good. She seemed quite placid as he walked away, and as Sephiroth navigated his way through the forest and away from the girl, he wondered briefly if it was because she thought he would return a second time to clarify what he had told her, or if she was simply glad to be rid of him once and for all.

While Sephiroth traveled further alone into the woods, all thoughts of the girl began to fade, replaced with thoughts of his surroundings. To any normal person, traveling through the Enchanted Forest at night would have been nearly impossible. In the heart of the forest, the trees grew close together, making it difficult to navigate effectively in the darkness; and many of their roots were gnarled and upturned, rising out through the dirt only to submerge again several inches later, creating vine-like loops, which seemed all-too perfect for catching the foot of an unsuspecting traveler.

There was a silence so complete that it was foreboding – no wind, no occasional chirping of birds, nor the buzzing of insects. This silence in conjunction with the darkness would make the forest seem like an endless void, but for Sephiroth, the darkness barely registered, and the quiet did not faze him. If anything, it only allowed his thoughts to wander all the more, not being able to absently focus on distracting noises.

Somehow, his thoughts continued to drift towards the Cetra girl. It was not that he was particularly concerned about her, or about her situation, but she had not responded the way he expected her to – with hysterical sobs, and immediate acceptance of his words for truth – and that alone was enough to garner his interest for the moment. The girl was right not to trust his words at face value...though Sephiroth hoped she would realize that what he said was true, and not wander through a new life filled with lies.

Then again, it made little difference to him either way. He had told her the truth – something that no one had ever bothered to do for him. It was no longer his concern, and he wasn't sure why he was even giving it thought, anyway.

"It's because she's different, isn't it?"

Sephiroth halted in his tracks. It was that voice again. That same sickly-sweet feminine voice that plagued him for all those years in the Lifestream. He thought she was just a daydream of his, one that he admittedly interacted with out of sheer boredom, but a daydream nonetheless. But then why was he hearing her voice now?

Sephiroth glanced around the forest for her, but could see nothing, nor discern where the voice came from. "What do you mean?" he asked, mostly in the hopes of locating the source of the voice.

"I mean that she's different from normal people, even now." Her voice seemed to be shifting constantly – flitting between bushes and trees, making it impossible for Sephiroth to pinpoint it. "Something about her always seemed...off...somehow. Of course, she tried so hard to cover it up that none of us had the heart to say anything. You've noticed it too, haven't you?"

"Not really," he said nonchalantly, and she giggled in response. "Is something funny?"

"Oh, no, not really. It's just...well, it's just that you're so _dismissive_! You're usually fascinated by what you don't understand."

"You give your friend far too much credit."

"So says the man still thinking about her."

Sephiroth turned quickly, feeling a presence behind him, and he felt slightly foolish to see that he was alone. He called out to the voice, asking what it meant, but this time he received no response.

How was it that he could still hear her voice outside of the Lifestream? Perhaps he was crazy...again...but then, being able to even consider that he might be crazy automatically meant that he _wasn't_ crazy, didn't it?

Sephiroth sighed. His mind was going in circles – something it frequently did while during his five-hundred plus year confinement in the Lifestream, but never while he was alive. That was no good. Now that he was back in the realm of the living, he should make an effort to return to his former self. Well, pre-insanity former self, anyway.

Sephiroth cleared his mind and stood completely still as he surveyed the forest, reminding himself what his first priority should be. As he did so, one shining thought finally came into focus ...

How the hell did he get out of the Enchanted Forest last time?

* * *

After Sephiroth left her, Aeris had racked her brain for over twenty minutes trying to sort things out, and she had gotten absolutely nowhere. She didn't know whether to believe him or not. Would Sephiroth go out of his way to lie to her? Of course he would, the bastard. If she believed that five-hundred years had passed, and that everyone was dead, she would have no reason to search for Cloud and the others, no reason to help them stop Meteor and Sephiroth. If five-hundred years had passed, Sephiroth should have been defeated, and Meteor gone, and she would have nothing to worry about... Which was probably the exact thing he wanted her to think.

But what if he had been telling her the truth, and everyone _was_ dead? Avoiding the question of how he managed to get here in the first place, why would he bother telling her about it? He claimed it was because she didn't know, but what did he care? The only thing Aeris could think of was that he told her to clear his own conscious, if he even had one, which she didn't think he did.

No, that couldn't be right...if they were thrust into the future, why was he the only one who knew about it? It had to be a lie. But then, if he was lying because he wanted her out of the way, why didn't he just kill her...again? And why did she have the memories of Aya Urikawa? It was just too much to think about.

Aeris groaned. She was still standing in the same place where Sephiroth had left her, and had accomplished nothing, aside from confusing herself further, while her murderer was most likely miles away by now. She needed to clear her head and think about her immediate situation: she was in the Enchanted Forest and needed to get out. The solution to that seemed easy enough, Aeris thought as she fingered the necklace in her pocket.

Aeris began to walk forward to accomplish just that, but stopped almost immediately. The sound of footsteps brought a grin to her face, as it was probably Sephiroth again. Not that she particularly wanted to be anywhere near that man, but the image of him being lost and having to come back to her for help slightly amused her. This vision faded; however, as instead, through the trees, she could see two figures approaching her instead of one: a person and some sort of creature following closely behind.

Her first thought was that Sephiroth was being stalked by one of the forest's inhabitants, but the friendly proximity of the creature to the person suggested otherwise. Then Aeris realized that it might not be Sephiroth at all, and at this thought, she felt her stomach sink.

No one should be wandering this deep through the Enchanted Forest at night, especially without so much as a lantern to light their way. Aeris tried to calm herself down as her breathing started to become heavy. She began to back away from the approaching figures, hoping that they hadn't already seen her in the darkness, and that she'd be able to elude them, but every step back she took sounded thunderous in the silence of the forest.

The feeling of a rock beneath her foot jostled her, and without thinking, Aeris automatically shifted her weight to the other foot, and skid the rock out of her path. Aeris tensed, knowing that if the impending duo hadn't been aware of her presence, that they surely were now.

Unable to think of another option, she called out, "Hello?" Her voice was unsteady, but Aeris stood her ground as the forms of the strangers slowly became more pronounced. Now it was clear that the person was a tall man, about as tall as Sephiroth, and clad in some sort of cape, which billowed out behind him. The animal that accompanied him looked to be some sort of wolf, and as Aeris realized their true identities, her heart nearly stopped.

Nanaki and Vincent stopped several yards away after she had called out.

"...Aeris?" Vincent said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"It's Miss Urikawa..." Nanaki said shortly after, once his eyes registered who it was.

Vincent looked at Nanaki. "You know this girl?"

"She's a student at the university where I teach."

"She looks just like..."

"Yes, I know," Nanaki said, and then continued to walk towards the girl. Before Nanaki could even think of asking why she was here, she suddenly ran forward, diving towards him, and flung her arms around his neck.

"I knew it was a lie," she said, voice muffled as she buried her face into his fur. "I just knew it." Composing herself a little, she pulled away from Nanaki, a smile on her face. "You came back for me."

Had Aeris not been so focused on her own relief, she would have noticed the look of confusion on Nanaki's face, (if indeed a look of confusion could be recognizable on a face such as his to begin with). "Are you hurt?" Nanaki asked.

Aeris shook her head. "No. I don't know how, but I'm just fine."

"How did you end up here of all places?" Nanaki asked. "Kyoko told me that the two of you were going to Costa del Sol."

"...K-kyoko...?" Aeris stammered, understanding creeping around the edges of her mind, but refusing to be acknowledged just yet.

"Come to think of it," Nanaki said, walking a bit past Aeris to scan the forest, "where is Kyoko? Is she not with you?"

Aeris' body began to tremble at the second mention of Kyoko. Those images – _memories_ – were true? Was she really this "Aya"?

She thought of Sephiroth suddenly. _Five hundred years have passed since our deaths._ That was really the truth? She looked to Vincent, who had been completely silent this whole time, hoping for some sort of answer, but his face held her with no recognition, as if she were a complete stranger to him.

"Aya?" Nanaki said, concerned.

"Aeris," she corrected.

Nanaki said nothing, nonplussed.

"Don't you remember me, Red?" Aeris asked, her voice wavering as she looked to her friends for recognition. "Vincent? ...it's me, Aeris."

"Aeris...?" Nanaki said hesitantly, but then shook his head. "Wha...what is going on?"

"This probably doesn't make much sense, but I am Aeris. I-If you'll just listen--"

"Aeris is dead," Vincent said, quickly.

Aeris flinched at the word 'dead', but took a deep breath, and tried to continue: "And has been for over five-hundred years, right? I know. I didn't want to believe Sephiroth at first, but..."

Nanaki's ears perked at the name. "Wait, _Sephiroth_?"

"Y-yes. He's still alive...or alive again, or something... He was the one who told me. Look, I-I know this sounds crazy, but it's the truth."

"Let me see if I understand this correctly," Nanaki said, trying to remain calm and to figure out the situation. "You think that you are...Aeris, and that Sephiroth...is alive?"

"I'm not explaining this very well," she said with a sigh. Her hands gripped at the hem of her shirt to keep from trembling. "This will sound ridiculous, but when Sephiroth killed me in the past, I was somehow put here, inside of Aya in this time, and--"

Vincent walked towards Aeris, and her words faded away. He stood a little too close for comfort, his clothes close enough to brush against her own, though no heat emanated from his body. She looked up at his face and smiled weakly, and his eyes seemed to penetrate her as he said, "It sounds as though you have been through a lot for one day. Perhaps it would be in your best interest to rest."

Aeris shrunk away from Vincent as he towered over her. Even if his words were nice enough, his tone made it sound like an order, or a threat. She looked quickly back and forth between Nanaki and Vincent, feeling very much like a mouse being cornered by two cats.

"Rest? There's no way that I can rest now," Aeris said, and stepped towards Nanaki, feeling that, of the two, he would be the most likely to listen to her. "Please, you have to believe me."

Vincent stepped in front of her, blocking her from Nanaki, and breaking the distance between them again. He placed a cold hand on her shoulder, and said, "I think you'll find that you're really quite tired."

Aeris was perfectly ready to convince her friends that what she said was true, and yet words seemed to fail her. Her mind became a sudden blank, and whatever she was arguing for in the first place didn't seem so important anymore. It was a losing battle to keep her eyes opened, but it seemed entirely acceptable for her to give in to her body and close them. Before losing all consciousness, Aeris felt herself slump forward into Vincent, and felt his arms around her.

Nanaki watched silently from the sidelines, surprised at first, until understanding dawned on him. "Sleep materia?" He asked, and Vincent gave him a look telling him that there was no need to.

* * *

Grass.

She could smell grass, and, faintly, the waxy scent of old wood. There was no breeze, but it felt as though she were lying on the ground, so she must be outside. Yet the wood smell was not like that of trees, but that of wooden furniture. She needed more information. She needed visuals. Aeris opened her eyes.

She was lying in a patch of soft, sweet smelling grass, sporadically kissed with flowers, and beyond that she could see rows of wooden pews. Aeris tensed, recognizing the location immediately. She feared that if she sat up this would all be a dream, and so she contented herself in simply remaining on the bed of earth. Aeris wondered when she was last in this church as she idly reached out her hand towards a small white lily, and gingerly traced her thumb down one of its petals.

It was when she met Cloud.

Aeris bit her lower lip and sighed. Was he really dead? Lying here wasn't giving her any answers, and she knew she was being childish. She didn't pass out in her church, so she should not be waking in it. Aeris needed to know why she was here, and for that, she needed to get up.

Pushing herself up by the palms of her hands so that she was sitting, Aeris saw that she was wearing her pink sundress and cropped red coat, not the black t-shirt and jeans from before. A quick glance around the church told her that Nanaki and Vincent were not here with her either.

Did she dream that whole thing? It was the only thing that Aeris could think of: she had died and awoken here after a dream. But if she was dead, why was she in the church and not in a puff of white clouds, or something like that?

Aeris looked at her surroundings. While at first glance it appeared to be the same church from Sector 5, now that Aeris paid closer attention, she noticed that certain things were not quite right about it. The second pew on the left side was still intact when it should have been dilapidated, while the two pews behind it had fallen apart instead. The images in the stained glass were not what she remembered, and in addition to the white and pale yellow lilies, which grew here before, the small patch of grass was also shared by powder blue hyacinths, budding violets and snapdragons.

The more Aeris scrutinized her church, the more it seemed to shift around her, and the walls of the church wavered slightly, as if they were made of gelatin. Was this an illusion? Aeris wondered. For, if not truly her church, then what was this place?

"Home," a feminine voice answered. Aeris recognized it immediately, and her stiff shoulders relaxed a little. Still sitting in the grass, she turned slightly to face the woman behind her.

"Mom," Aeris whispered, a smile gracing her face.

Unlike the church, Ifalna was just as Aeris remembered. The same waist-length, wavy chestnut hair, the same emerald eyes, the same warm smile, and the same open arms, enticing her daughter's embrace.

Aeris stood up quickly, not bothering to brush off her dress before wrapping her arms around her mother.

"Welcome home, Aeris… It's been such a long time," Ifalna said as she held her daughter. Aeris felt her mother tremble slightly, and she pulled back to see Ifalna's face, wet with tears.

"Mom, what's wrong?"

Ifalna shook her head, and gave an embarrassed laugh as she wiped the moisture from her eyes. "I'm sorry, dear. I'm just so happy to see you."

Aeris nodded in agreement, though she found her mother's reaction strange. Ifalna acted as though she hadn't seen her daughter in a very long time, when Aeris had spoken to her only yesterday, before she summoned Holy.

"It's good to see you again, too, but where are we...? Is this... Am I dead?"

"Oh, goodness, no. You're just unconscious."

Aeris frowned, not quite understanding. How could she only be unconscious? Did she survive Sephiroth's attack? Did Cloud save her? Though she had resigned herself to die, she became suddenly hopeful at the possibility of survival. "Did Cloud--"

"Don't let your imagination get the best of you, Aeris," Ifalna said, quickly. "You know the truth."

Aeris' breath caught in her throat and she nodded. "That I've been dead for over 500 years..."

Aeris bit the inside of her lip as Ifalna nodded. That explained Ifalna's reaction. It wasn't just yesterday that they had spoken, it was 500 years ago. Somewhere in her heart, Aeris had known it, but to finally accept that what her murderer told her was true, that all of her friends were now dead, was too much, and she collapsed to the ground and wept.

Ifalna was at her side immediately, cradling her daughter in her arms, and whispering comforting words to Aeris, while stroking her hair. After several minutes, Ifalna managed to calm her daughter down, but tears still streamed from her eyes.

"Why did he have to tell me?" Aeris said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Who?" Ifalna asked.

"_Sephiroth_," Aeris said bitterly. "Why did he have to be the one to..." Her words choked off as another wave of sadness hit her, and she covered her face with her hands to muffle her sobs. "Anyone but him... Anyone would have been better but him!"

Ifalna rubbed her daughter's back. "I see. So Sephiroth told you? I'm so sorry..."

Aeris sniffled, rubbing the tears from her eyes. "You don't seem very surprised..." she mused to herself, before realizing the true weight of what she had said. "Did...did you already know that he was alive?" she asked, backing away from Ifalna's comforting hands to see her reaction.

Ifalna averted her eyes, training them on some distant point to her left. "Well...I am surprised that he was the one to tell you... But, I did know that he was alive, yes."

"How? _Why_? Why is he back?" Aeris said, the sadness in her voice burning away.

Ifalna sighed, clearly reluctant to speak on the matter. "The Elders revived him."

"The who?"

"The Elders of the Promised Land."

"Of the Promised Land?" Aeris repeated, finding it even more unbelievable the second time around, and she stared at her mother, words momentarily lost to her.

Ifalna, upon seeing her daughter's growing anger, immediately tried to placate her. "How about we take a break from this? Why don't you tell me about you? Have you been eating well?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Aeris asked, ignoring her mother's attempt to change the subject. "Why would they do that! Do they want him to summon Meteor again?"

"Aeris--"

"That man is a complete sociopath who should still be in whatever hell he came from! I don't know what the Elders were thinking when they revived him, but he'll pick up right where he—" Aeris' voice trailed off as she saw the look on her mother's face. Ifalna's eyes were trained on her hands as she nervously fidgeted with the tassel of the scarf tied around her waist. Aeris sighed, seeing how upset she was making her mother, who probably already felt guilty enough as it was, and decided to drop the subject.

"Do you like being back in your church?" Ifalna ventured to ask after several minutes of silence.

"This isn't _my_ church. For one, the stained glass windows are wrong," Aeris said indignantly, and was about to list other faults, but stopped herself, lest she upset her mother more.

"I'm sorry. I did the best I could to recreate it for you," Ifalna said softly, and Aeris cursed herself for being so conceited. All Aeris could do was complain that things weren't how she wanted them to be, and meanwhile Ifalna was giving her all to make Aeris happy.

"You were always so happy in the church…I wanted to set you at ease, and I thought that by putting you in your old clothes and bringing you here… But perhaps I shouldn't have…?"

"No, no, it's okay," Aeris said, the anger and bitterness gone from her voice. "I _really_ appreciate it. Thank you, Mom."

Hearing this, Ifalna perked up, a shy smile once again gracing her face. "Good. I'm glad to hear it."

"Um, can I ask you something?" Aeris said, trying to keep her tone neutral.

"Of course, dear. What is it?"

"Why am I like this?" She paused for an answer, but the look on her mother's face told Aeris that she didn't understand her question. "I mean...these memories of Aya's, why do I have them?"

Ifalna shook her head, and she placed a comforting hand upon Aeris' cheek. "You are you again. That's all that matters."

While that didn't really answer Aeris' question, she decided against telling her mother so, as Ifalna clearly didn't want to speak about it, and while it frustrated Aeris that she wouldn't get any answers from the one person who might have known what was going on, she was also thankful to be able to spend time with Ifalna as her daughter.

Aeris leaned over to trace her fingers over a small purple bud by her feet, and was about to tell Ifalna how she liked the additional flowers, but when she looked up, her mother was gone.

"Mom?" Aeris called, and she stood up to look around the church for her, but as she did so, the pews faded into nothingness, and the ground where she stood dissipated at her feet. "Mom!"

Aeris tried to run forward, but her feet tread on empty air. She called out again for her mother, but Ifalna was gone. Then the church was gone, and only blackness remained.

* * *

"The more a man is deluded, the happier he is."

_–Desiderius Erasmus_

* * *

**Author's Note:** She's aliiiiiiiiiiiive! Well, now that I'm back from Japan I should be able to post more often than every several months. Hopefully my long hiatus hasn't caused you all to abandon VoG.

This chapter gave me a bit of trouble, so a big hug and an apple pie goes to _Storyteller in Silence_ for talking with me about it, and being a fantastic beta. The actual title was going to be "Walking through woods is an Exalted Dream," but, alas, it was too long.

Submitting reviews are like giving tips to waiters: they're not mandatory, but they make your life a lot happier, so thanks bunches to everyone who leaves one.


	9. DELIRIUM: House of Leaves

_"The vaccine for Parasite X…I did some research on it. That article makes it seem like a wonderful panacea, but those that were given the vaccine actually experienced interesting side affects – increased strength and agility, enhanced vision, and mild hallucinations."_

_"What of it?"_

_"Those were the same side affects of the first class SOLDIERs. We know that part of their treatment, what made them superior to all other classes, were the Jenova cells. This vaccine is making ordinary citizens practically combat-ready. What if--"_

_"Jenova doesn't exist anymore. She died along with Sephiroth."_

_"Perhaps. But, I've been thinking about this, and I've had the past five centuries to do it: could the eight of us really defeat an entity that the entire Cetra race could only seal away? Besides, I didn't tell you what kind of hallucinations they were experiencing."_

_"Enlighten me."_

_"Not only did nearly all recipients of the vaccine report hearing a voice, but they all confirmed that it was the voice of a woman."_

**DELIRIUM: House of Leaves**

* * *

They were called, quite simply, the Elders by the general population – all of which knew of their existence, but little else about them. According to legend, the five Elders were the first in existence, the founders of the Promised Land, and held infinite power. They had supposedly "transcended existence", and were now bodiless, genderless, wisps of a presence…or so it seemed for those of a weaker constitution. The strong inhabitants of the Promised Land, if they were lucky, would be able to detect the faintest of breezes, like raw energy, as an Elder passed by upon the grassy plains. The truly powerful inhabitants would see a soft halo of light.

The rest of the Cetra who residedin the Promised Land, however, could not see nor hear anything of the Elders, but believed that they existed nonetheless. Some claimed they had been spoken to by an Elder – a voice which was both male and female, singular and many, suddenly streaming from the ether to give them advice. Though what this advice was about, the recipient typically would not say.

The bodies of the five Elders, which only they could see, were individually chosen. Whether the Elders actually appeared as such in life, even they themselves could not remember – only their true names remained. The one named Astaroth chose to appear as a small boy, no older than seven or eight, with eyes the color of gold, who kept his black hair long and shaggy, and had a mischievous grin that seemed to shatter the world around him, until there was nothing real in reality; Eligos appeared as a kind, young knight, handsome and refined, with newly buffed spaulders on his shoulders, and a spear strapped to his back; Bune took the form of a modern-day ruffian with wild red hair, an orange trench coat, and a supercilious attitude to match; Vepar took the guise of an elegant lady, whose many glittering adornments to her body did little to outshine her natural beauty, but could do nothing to warm her temperament. The fifth Elder, Ipos, had appeared as a teen girl, but she was no longer present, and was never spoken of but for rare occasions.

This was not one of them.

Instead, for this rare occasion, Ifalna stood before them, as an ant would stand before a god. There were no surroundings; all was white, almost as if the Elders wanted nothing to distract attention from them. The Elders faced Ifalna, all in a seated position, though there were no chairs beneath them, except for Bune, who seemed to lean against an invisible wall, hands stuffed in the pockets of his trench coat.

"Did you really think that we wouldn't find out?" Vepar said, her voice a low purr. Though she spoke to Ifalna, her attention was focused on the diamond-encrusted bangles encircling her wrist.

"Of course not," Ifalna responded flatly, as if explaining something that should have been obvious. "I knew it was only a matter of time."

"You ungrateful bit--" Bune began, but was cut short by Astaroth.

"We granted the soul of the planet's savior to be reborn as a way of thanks, and this is how you repay us?" As he spoke, he leaned forward, and rested his elbows on a spot in front of him, then he let his small face collapse into his hands. The bangs of his hair masked his eyes in this position, though a small grin still stayed on his face.

"You owe my daughter more than that for fixing _your_ mistake," she said sternly, feeling like she was scolding a young boy.

A hush spread over the Elders, for they were not used to such blatant disrespect, and they looked to Astaroth for his response. The boy snorted, then put his hands behind his head as he crossed his legs, and reclined in the air. "Fine, then. We'll decide your punishment for this. In the meantime, make yourself comfortable here, 'cause you'll be staying for a very long time." Though his mannerisms were childlike, Ifalna had to remind herself that he wasn't one.

Astaroth remained in his lounged position for a few moments more, hands cradling his head, legs crossed, and foot bopping to a silent beat. Then, he sprang up, and pointed to Eligos, who had been completely silent. "You stay," He said, his lackadaisical attitude evaporating to reveal a sudden coldness. To the others, he said simply, "Let's go," before they all vanished from sight.

Ifalna sighed. She might have appeared unfazed, but her heart jack-hammered in her chest.

Eligos watched her, but she refused to acknowledge him. Eligos approached her, once he realized she was deliberately feigning ignorance, but it was only when he stood uncomfortably close to her that she bothered to look at him. Even then, it was merely a slight tilt of the head, just enough to see him.

"When I argued for your daughter's rebirth…" he began heatedly, but paused, and considered his words. "When I put you in charge of overseeing…" he tried again, but stopped just as suddenly as he started.

He sighed, waited a moment, and when Eligos spoke again, his voice was softer. "I had no idea that you would do something like this. If you knew that you would be caught…why bother doing it?"

"Because what's done is done," she said. "You Elders don't have as much power as you think you do. You might be able to control and manipulate things _here_, but my daughter belongs to the Planet now. You can't touch her."

"Not directly, no," Eligos admitted with a shrug, "but we have ways around that. Don't forget, Ifalna," he added pointedly, "she's still mortal, and now that her Cetra mind has awakened, where do you think she will go when she's killed again? She will be right back here, and you'll have been punished for nothing."

Ifalna stayed silent and fumed, knowing that Eligos' words held an obvious threat– he didn't say _if_ Aeris was killed she would return to the Promised Land; he said _when_.

"I don't know what they'll do to you," he continued. "Because I argued to have you put in charge of her rebirth to begin with, I have no say in the matter."

She nodded, knowing that her insubordination had caused mistrust amongst the Elders.

"Will you be punished, too?" She asked.

"Do you really care?"

With a small chuckle, Ifalna replied evenly, "No."

Eligos nodded, and before either could speak again, the other three Elders returned.  
Ifalna thought to query about their decision, but the determined, yet impish, look on Astaroth's boyish-face kept her mute. Silently, Eligos faded, and rematerialized by the other Elders, as if already knowing their plans; and before the four of them, a tall, golden pedestal appeared, covered in a sheer plum-colored cloth. On top of this cloth was a thin, flat square. What it was made of, Ifalna couldn't be sure, but it covered the entire span of the pedestal.

"Come look," Vepar whispered to Ifalna, her voice full of mirth.

As Ifalna approached the square, she saw that it was covered in dirt, and it was growing. A mini landscape began to form: little trees sprouting from the dirt on the square, starting as tiny seedlings, and growing into a forest, which encompassed the entire surface of the flattened square. A tiny shimmer caught her eye, and she noticed that in a small clearing, a miniature bonfire burned next to a tent, and a sleeping bag.

Ifalna opened her mouth to ask the Elders what this small forest was, and what it had to do with her punishment, but something else began to move on the square as well. There were several movements in various places of the forest, which looked to be caused by some sort of figurines, as small as pieces on a chessboard, which moved with an eerie, life-like fluidity. There was a figurine of a man, wandering through the woods, with a girl following a short distance behind him. By the tent, some distance away, a dog sat next to his master, and warmed himself by the fire.

"Bune, give them one of yours," Astaroth said, and with a grunt, Bune stepped forward. With his arm outstretched, palm facing upwards, a small, black object materialized in his hand. At first it looked to be a misshapen sphere, but slowly the ball began to morph and twist into something grotesque, which he placed on the board, just shy of the campsite.

Ifalna watched as the thing prowled the area, nearing the man and his dog, and she felt a tightening in her chest.

"What are you doing?" Ifalna asked, finally finding her voice.

"Shhh," Vesper cooed. "Watch."

And Ifalna watched as the fabric of the tent rippled, and a figurine, which looked all too similar to Aeris, emerged, and as Ifalna glanced up into the devious eyes of the Elders, a sense of dread washed over her.

* * *

It was still dark when Aeris opened her eyes. She found herself lying in a sleeping bag inside of a small tent. A fire flickered outside, casting two silhouettes against the fabric wall of the tent. Vincent and Red. They must have brought her here after she had passed out. Her head still swam as if under a heavy anesthetic. A sleep spell, she realized.

She could hear the murmurs of speech through the tent, and though she was still too light-headed to sit up, she inched herself closer towards the edge of the tent to hear.

Outside, Nanaki lay on the ground, head resting on his paws, uncomfortable, and no longer used to lying on such hard surfaces. Vincent sat next to him, knees partially drawn towards his chest, with his arms casually draped over them.

"I find that hard to believe, too," Vincent said, responding to another one of Nanaki's many suggestions as to what was going on. "Do you really believe that the makers of this vaccine are using Jenova cells? That we didn't kill her?"

"Well, I never mentioned Jenova in the history books I wrote; there should be no record of Jenova existing at all. So it's impossible that anyone would know about her now. But if Jenova did survive, and this," Nanaki paused to scan the article for the name, "Slifka Norr got a hold of her maybe he… No, that doesn't make sense, either. Even if she did survive, wouldn't she have done something before now? Maybe it's not Jenova at all, but just something that acts like her."

Vincent thought to discredit that idea, too, but the fact that the receivers of the vaccine were hearing a woman's voice made him consider the possibility. "Something that acts like Jenova? Is that possible?"

"I don't know."

Both males sighed. All of this hypothesizing had gotten them absolutely nowhere.

"So," Nanaki began again after several minutes of heavy silence, this time nudging the Lunar Way pamphlet towards Vincent with his nose. "What are your thoughts on this?"

Vincent glanced at the cover, not bothering to page through it again. "It's ridiculous dogma," he said matter-of-factly.

"Yes, but," Nanaki pushed, "this mention of the Red Goddess, and her son, the Emperor doesn't it remind you of Jenova and Sephiroth?"

Vincent said nothing for a moment, then relented, "I suppose."

"And if Aya really is Aeris, and Sephiroth is somehow alive again…"

"You believe Aya's story?" Vincent asked, raising a brow.

Nanaki sighed again, and plopped his head back against his paws, frustrated. "I'm not sure. But...we can't ignore the possibility." Restless, and a little stiff, Nanaki stood up to pace in front of the fire. "I keep feeling like these things are linked somehow; things dealing with the Parasite X virus, and Sephiroth and Aeris, and the Lunar Way . That there's some connection between them."

"I wonder if your longing for the past is clouding your judgment."

Nanaki paused, looked at Vincent. "You think I'm making this up," he stated, now feeling slightly insecure with his own thoughts, and he sat back on the ground, shoulders slightly slumped.

"I think you are seeing what you want to see with what limited information we have."

"Perhaps."

"Though…" Vincent began, and Nanaki's ears perked up, "there _might_ be some truth in your hypothesis. At least regarding Aya. It all really depends on how she came across this." Vincent's human hand plunged into his pocket, rummaged around for a bit, and when he extracted it, a soft glow surrounded his fist. Opening his hand, he revealed a glowing jewel attached to a thin, gold chain.

Nanaki padded over to him, and practically pushed his furry face into Vincent's hand to see the radiant gem. "Is that materia?" He wondered aloud, and then looked to Vincent. "When did you…?"

"It was in her pocket."

Nanaki walked to the other side of Vincent, as if from that view point, he would understand things better. "What kind of materia is it?" He asked, unable to keep the curious excitement from his voice, or his tail from anxiously swishing from side to side behind him.

"That might not be the question you want to ask," Vincent said, and before his jittery companion could ask any questions, Vincent took two of the articles that Nanaki had laid out before the fire, anchored by rocks, and placed them side by side. They were the articles regarding the strange stone found in Urfe's vacation home in Icicle Village , and the article which reported it stolen.

"You think this stone is the one mentioned in the articles?" Nanaki asked, after taking a minute to review both articles.

"Perhaps your enthusiasm has infected me as well, but it does match the description. You said you had worked with Urfe. Do you know of any reason why he might have something like this?"

"No…but if this really is the same stone, how could Aya have gotten a hold of it?"

"Good question." At this, Vincent paused, and turned slightly towards the tent behind him, and said loudly, "How did you manage to acquire this necklace, Aya? If you're going to eavesdrop, you might as well take part in the conversation."

Nanaki looked at Vincent, and then towards the tent, and surely, after a pause, Aya emerged.

"You were listening?" Nanaki asked, feeling slightly sheepish.

She sighed, and stood uncomfortably by the tent, looking as though she wanted nothing more but to hide inside of it again. "Yes, I was listening."

"How much did you hear?"

"Enough to know that you don't believe me."

"We might be a little more understanding, if you tell us how you got this."

Nanaki nodded towards the necklace in Vincent's hand. She looked at the necklace, the surprise obvious on her face, "How did you--"

"Unfortunately," Vincent interrupted, shoving the necklace into his pocket, "this will have to wait…"

And all eyes saw immediately what caused Vincent's alarm.

* * *

The creature sat crouched in the thicket, swallowed in the darkness. There was only one of them, as far as anyone could tell. Aeris slowly stepped back towards the tent; Vincent and Nanaki stood protectively in front of her.

Vincent's hand hovered above the gun in its holster, waiting. A sudden scratching and the sound of movement, and Vincent's weapon was drawn. Five-hundred years had taken its toll on the gun; however, and it clicked uselessly in Vincent's hand. He cast it aside, barely having time to block with his metal arm, as the creature emerged from the thicket with a flying leap, and pinned Vincent to the ground.

Now out of the darkness, the creature could truly be seen. It had the body of the reptile, with hard, green scales covering its entire length; the wings and the tail of a hawk, and the paws and head of a giant, wolf.

"Vincent!" Aeris cried. She made a motion to aid him, but thought against it immediately, not knowing what she could do to help. Instead, she watched on as the terrible amalgamation attempted to bite Vincent, who was only able to hold it off by shoving his metal arm into the creature's mouth, and pushing it as far away as possible, though this didn't save him from the beast's claws, which raked at him viciously. The creature chomped on the metal arm, searching for actual meat and bone.

A quick howl from Nanaki alerted Vincent seconds before the creature caught flame, along with Vincent's shoulder. The creature cried out, and Vincent took this time to shove it off and away, and pat down the flame on his shoulder, before Nanaki set the beast ablaze again.

The creature spread its wings, attempting to escape, but the moment it leapt off the ground, it collapsed with a loud thud. The thing didn't move again, and instead lay still in a smoldering heap, parts of it still burning, lighting the darkened forest.

Vincent looked back towards Nanaki, holding his shoulder, and said, "Your aim is a little off."

Nanaki nodded, not bothering to deny it, and instead changed the subject. "What was that thing? I've never seen anything like it before."

"I don't know," Vincent replied, and grabbed the Death Penalty off the ground before approaching Aeris. She sat shivering slightly against the tent, and he knelt down in front of her. "Do you have any materia?"

She shook her head.

"Take this," he said, handing her an ice materia from the broken weapon. "Don't depend on us to protect you."

"Vincent..." Red started, but Vincent continued.

"I don't know what you intend to do from here, but I suggest you find a way to protect yourself. Everyone else is dead, Red is old, and I'm now short a weapon. We can't coddle you like we did before."

Aeris sat still for a moment before muttering softly, "I understand."

Vincent nodded. "Can you heal me?"

"I think so..." Aeris said, and clasped her hands in front of her. She hesitated, remembering that her healing spell did little to aid Sephiroth, but was willing to try it again anyway. Eyes closed, Aeris focused on Vincent, on surrounding him with herself, her essence, and felt relieved at the sensation of wind wrapping itself around them.

The spell was still no where near as strong as it used to be, but she was getting better at it, and the burn hadn't been very serious. She hesitated after she had healed Vincent, and watched him, waiting for some sort of approval, or acceptance, but he said nothing, not even a "thanks", and Aeris stood, and silently walked back towards the tent, feeling weak and useless.

* * *

She had tried to stop it, to grab the horrendous little thing out of the tiny forest, and away from her figurine daughter, but the moment Ifalna's hand neared the tops of the trees, a tremor coursed its way through her body, and pain threaded through her veins. She recoiled immediately, holding her hand to her chest, and looked towards the Elders for an explanation. They barely gave her a glance, and, being ignored, Ifalna could do nothing but watch the scene play out along with them.

Nothing was done while the creature had the upper hand, but stranger still was that even as the tables began to turn, the Elders did nothing. Just stood and watched, although now they didn't seem so smugly confident. At the end of it all, the Elder's creation was dead, and Ifalna realized the truth.

"See?" she said, her earlier nervousness slowly dissipating, "Throw as many obstacles on that board as you can. In the end, you can only watch as they're destroyed."

Astaroth was not deterred in the least. "You are grossly overestimating their abilities, Ifalna," he said, circling the pedestal, watching the figurines. "Victory won't always side with your daughter. How long will she be able to last?"

* * *

Well, he couldn't just walk out, that was for sure. He'd tried it briefly, marking trees along the way, and though he didn't pass by one of his previously marked trees, when Sephiroth had chanced a look back, there were no marks at all, meaning that the forest had shifted again, and he was even more lost than before. He couldn't just level the damned forest, either, as he was without the trusty aid of the Masamune. Sephiroth had tried to call for his sword, and waited for the familiar weight of it in his hand, yet nothing happened. No doubt another cruel trick of the forest, though that might have been more for self-preservation, aware of his vicious intents, than anything else.

How else could Sephiroth get out? An idea flickered into view, but it was extinguished immediately. At this point, as much as Sephiroth would love to burn the whole place to the ground, it would be his luck that even THAT wouldn't break the forest's spell, and not only would he still be stuck in the forest, but it would be on fire, too. Burning to a crisp wasn't exactly on Sephiroth's list of things to do, although, he had to admit, it would be a rather poetic end, as the residents of Nibelheim had suffered the same fate.

Destiny aside, if he couldn't burn or hack down the forest, and he couldn't just walk out, that left only one viable option:

Fly.

Sephiroth mentally chuckled when he thought of it – the idea alone bordered ridiculous, but why couldn't he just fly out of here? He had been able to do it in his previous life, was there any reason to think he couldn't do it now? Sephiroth paused, thought about it, and realized that one thing could keep him from flight: Jenova. Even if she was intrinsically a part of him, it was her cells specifically that enabled him to take to the skies in the first place. Perhaps when she died, her influence inside of him had died as well?

There was no sense in wasting time debating about whether or not he could do it; so, without a second thought, Sephiroth closed his eyes, focused his energy, and pushed off the ground.

Though he was capable of doing it, flying had never been very enjoyable for Sephiroth. On the most basic level, it required a lot of concentration, and almost perfect control of energy. It wasn't as easy as just exerting energy through the bottom of his feet – that was fine for levitation, but did little in regards to actual transportation. Instead, it was more of a manipulation of the physical plane, and Sephiroth's position in it.

Then there was the sensation of flying itself. Humans were never meant to fly, and his body let him know it. While Jenova might have lifted him up, the small part of him that was still human fought with all its might to keep him down. Though this was purely mental, it still produced quite a few physical manifestations. As a child, growing within the starch white walls of ShinRa's laboratory, Sephiroth often wished for wings, so that he could fly away, and never return. He had always associated flying with freedom, and bliss; now he associated it with the sensation of his flesh peeling away, and his organs twisting themselves apart.

Still, even with its unpleasantries, flying most certainly had its benefits, the most important, at the moment, was getting him out of this forest. If he could still do it...

Sephiroth opened his eyes, not realizing that he had closed them when he had leapt off the ground, and he allowed himself the briefest smirk when he saw that he hovered nearly two feet off the earth. Focusing his energy, he pictured himself moving through the space, and then felt his body follow through.

He travelled up and up, faster, faster, and even as his stomach began to twist into itself, and his body felt as though it would rupture, Sephiroth never stopped, never slowed down. The tops of the trees were coming into view; he would clear them soon. He pushed himself onward, flying ever higher, watching branches and leaves pass by in a blur.

The tops of the trees were still a long distance away. Sephiroth hadn't realized the trees were so tall. He looked below him to measure his progress, to get a better view of just how tall the trees were, how far he had already flown, and what he saw nearly shocked him into falling.

He was less than five feet from the ground.

Sephiroth grunted with disgust. Still levitating in the air, he pushed himself harder, this time keeping his eyes locked on the earth, watching as the distance grew. That was better. He wasn't sure what the problem had been, how even though he appearered to be traveling upwards, in actuality he'd remained stationary. At least now, monitoring his distance, Sephiroth definitely knew he was rising skyward.

Figuring that he should be nearing the top by now, as the ground looked to be about thirty feet below him, Sephiroth turned his eyes skyward, expecting to see the night sky, perhaps a few stars, but instead, there was thirty more feet worth of trees. Sephiroth looked below him again, confused, and now irate, to see that he was _still_ only five feet from the ground.

Sephiroth descended to the earth silently, and the moment his feet touched the dirt, he began to pace, glaring at each and every tree as he did so. He clenched his hands into fists, and then unclenched them again. For a moment he paused, looked towards the sky, muttered to himself, and then continued to pace. Then he stopped suddenly, and tried again.

Eyes closed, he felt himself lift, felt the wind course over his body as he sailed upwards, instinctively avoiding the branches of trees as he did so. The Enchanted forest was a forest of visual illusions. With his eyes closed, focusing on only sensational stimuli, he would beat the system. After a minute or two, the urge to chance a peak, to see his actual progress, became overwhelming, and Sephiroth turned his face down, and looked.

"Son of a bitch," he growled, and dropped the five feet to the ground, landing in a slight crouch, before standing tall. Jaw clenched, he pressed the palm of his hand on a tree, and leaned forward against it. His fingers drummed with frustration against the bark, and his bangs fell into his eyes as he bowed his head and exhaled.

Sephiroth's hand fell away from the tree, and he straightened, looked at the tree for a moment, and then punched it, hard. His fist splintered the wood, cracking the tree up the middle, and Sephiroth punched it again, not yet satisfied with the level of destruction. The second hit split the tree completely in two, and both halves fell unceremoniously towards the earth, the weight uprooting the tree, pulling it from the ground. The halves landed with a loud thump, shaking the ground, and as it did so, Sephiroth heard someone gasp.

His body tightened, rigid, and he hissed through his teeth, "I suggest you get the fuck out here. Now."

It was not a suggestion.

"Someone's a little cranky," a feminine voice cooed, and its owner appeared shortly after, stepping over a branch from the upturned tree. She was a small, mousy girl, with nothing distinguishing about her, and certainly with no reason to be as haughty as she was around him.

"Who are you?" He growled.

"Now, now…" she giggled. "Is that any way to speak to your savior?"

"My _what_?" Sephiroth narrowed his eyes, and stepped towards her.

She laughed again, unfazed by his anger, or his advance. "Well, I guess 'savior' _is _a bit too strong a word…" She seemed to think about it, and said softly, "Norr would kill me if he heard me speak to you like this, but as far as I'm concerned, I don't have to show respect to you just yet." She shrugged, and then decidedly clapped her hands together, saying loudly, "Well, since I went through the trouble of finding you, I guess I should explain why I'm here."

Sephiroth paused. "You were looking for me?"

"Yes," she said condescendingly.

Hearing this, Sephiroth grinned. "I see," he said, and, without warning, lunged towards her. But she must have realized his intentions, and she turned and fled, just barely escaping his grasping hands. He surged forward after her, not about to let his only chance of escape get away herself, but she was gone.

Sephiroth's eyes scanned the trees for any movement, but he saw none.

"I wouldn't do that," her voice suddenly sounded from behind him.

Sephiroth pivoted, furious, and used his speed to appear next to her. She shrieked in surprise, but still managed to twist away, evade his grasp, and escape a second time into the woods.

Again, Sephiroth watched for movement, knowing it was fruitless and that the forest had already shifted. He waited for her voice again, and sure enough, she spoke, this time from his side. Unlike before, her voice was shaky, afraid. "Do it again, and I'll leave, and you'll never get out of here," she warned.

He turned to face her, but she was gone again, hidden within the forest.

"You're bluffing," he said aloud, knowing that she was listening. "You wouldn't walk away so easily, if you came through this forest just to find me."

"Are you really willing to take that chance?" Her voice sounded again. He heard her laugh, her confidence having been restored, and she appeared before him and said, "You need me," placing emphasis on each syllable.

Sephiroth tensed, wanting nothing more but to strangle that little bitch. He was already pissed as all hell, and her toying with him was not improving the situation. Though, Sephiroth knew that if he approached her again, she could very well keep with her threat, and leave him here. He'd be damned if his pride let an opportunity like this slip away. As much as Sephiroth was loath to admit it, she held power over him so long as she could travel the forest freely. She wouldn't let him get close enough to her to find where she hid her Lunar Harp, and without that, he was stuck.

For now, he would have to cooperate with her, much as it killed him to do it, though that cooperation would only last so long as he was in the forest. And so, Sephiroth resigned to do nothing, and remained standing where he was, but that didn't keep him from giving the mousy girl a serious death glare.

"Well, aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?" She asked, clearly unfazedby the look as she cocked her head to the side and smiled at him.

Sephiroth's glare darkened.

"Oh, fine," she mock-pouted. "You're not really doing us much good by being stuck in here, so I'm going to get you out, but--"

"Us?" Sephiroth interjected.

"You're not _listening_. I'm going to help you get out, _but_ you have to do something for me in return."

She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She took a step towards him before reconsidering, and crumpled up the paper in order to toss it to him instead. It bopped along the forest floor, before resting by his booted feet.

"I'd hand it to you, but I think it's best to keep my distance," she explained.

Sephiroth didn't move, simply looked as the ball of paper, and looked back at her.

"Oh, come on. Aren't you going to open it, or don't you want to get out of here?"

With an exaggerated sigh, Sephiroth crouched to pick it up, his eyes never leaving her, even as he stood back up and smoothed the paper out. There was something written on it, and he glanced at it briefly, before his eyes returned to the girl.

"What's this?"

"It's an address," she replied casually.

"I can see that. Why are you giving it to me?"

"You're going to go there in three months."

Sephiroth snorted, "And why would I do that?"

"Because you're going to want information, and, by then, I think you'll be worthy enough to receive it."

Sephiroth looked at her blankly. "I'll pass," he said, though he still held the paper in his hand.

"Are you sure?"

"Even if I agreed to go, how would you know I'm not just lying to get out of here?"

"I wouldn't," she admitted, "but, considering that we know why you're both here, I think it'd be in your best interest to show up."

Though Sephiroth's face remained stoic, he mulled over her words. Clearly, she was not acting alone in this. And, though she had never said his name, she seemed to know who he was. What struck him the most about what she said, however, was that she knew why they were "both" here. He wasn't sure who else she meant, and he had no intention of asking her, but Sephiroth had to admit that he was slightly curious.

She grinned, as if knowing his thoughts, and she said, "Follow me," and turned and walked forward.

In two strides, Sephiroth caught up to the girl, and walked closely behind her. He had thoughts of grabbing her then. She was so close, and, surely, she wouldn't be able to evade him from this proximity. Yet the possibility of her managing the impossible, and leaving him here, prevented any such action, and Sephiroth continued to walk mutely behind her.

A glimmer of light caught his attention, and Sephiroth could see through the woods a small clearing, with a campfire burning brightly next to a tent.

"You'll need something here," she explained softly, as if someone might hear.

Sephiroth frowned. "I thought you said that you were taking me out of the forest."

"Why?" She said indignantly. "So you can kill me on the spot once we're outside? I don't think so. I believe what I said was that I'd _help_ you get out of the forest, I never said I'd take you there myself. Now, the person sleeping in that tent has this necklace--"

"You want me to steal jewelry?"

"—they might be wearing it, or it might be in their pocket, or in their backpack, or something, but, yes, you're to steal it."

"And _that_ will get me out of here?" Sephiroth asked skeptically.

"Yep."

He shook his head, and grunted – the closest Sephiroth got to an actual laugh. "That's ridiculous."

The girl put her hands flippantly on her hips, shifting her weight. "Is it? In your position, can you really afford to be so dismissive? You shouldn't doubt something you don't even understand."

Sephiroth froze; her words sounding all too much like _hers_. "Fine. Then, explain to me how a piece of jewelry is supposed to get me out of here."

"Do you really think that the Lunar Harp is the _only_ thing capable of allowing passage through the Enchanted Forest?" She asked pointedly. "Do you even know what the Lunar Harp _is_?"

Sephiroth was silent. Then he said, "So, I take the necklace from the onein the tent, and I can leave. Is that it?"

She nodded, her mid-length, dirty-blonde hair bobbing with her. "Pretty much. Well," she said, turning on her heel, "best of luck, and don't forget about the address." She waived her hand in the air as she walked off, and Sephiroth called out to her, and made a motion to go after her, but stopped, knowing that she was already gone. He realized that she never mentioned her name.

But that was hardly important. The only thing that mattered was the tent, and getting the necklace off the person inside of it, so that he could get the hell out of here.

There was no movement from the person inside of the tent, as far as Sephiroth could tell from where he stood, and though there was a sleeping bag by the fire, no one was in it. Some part of Sephiroth was cautious, though even he himself was not quite sure why. No one would recognize him – no one was left alive who knew of his existence, with the exception of that Cetra girl, but she had her own problems to deal with. Even if she did tell someone, who would believe her? Sephiroth shouldn't care if someone saw him, shouldn't care if he just strode up to the tent, barged right in, and ripped the necklace off of the neck of the unsuspecting person, and left them there. He shouldn't care at all, but he did.

For once, no one knew who he was. His name wouldn't send shivers down a person's spine, and his silver hair, and serpentine eyes wouldn't strike fear into the hearts of men. If anything, his appearance would seem unsettling at most, but now, in this era, he had no reputation, no name; he was no one, and he liked it.

Sephiroth slinked towards the tent, soundlessly. He paused just outside of it and listened. He could hear the heavy, rhythmic breathing of the one who slept inside it. Sephiroth noticed that the sleeping bag by the fire was opened and mused, as if someone had just left it, and could return at any moment. Though he didn't sense anyone nearby, Sephiroth nevertheless entered the tent hastily, wanting to get in and out before being discovered.

The inside of the tent was small and cramped, barely enough room for one person, let alone two, and Sephiroth had to crouch low to the ground just to keep from knocking it over. The person in the tent was female, and she slept heavily, with her face buried in her sleeping bag. Not wanting to jostle the girl too much, Sephiroth gently brushed her hair away from the nape of her neck, saw that it was bare, and knew that the necklace must be elsewhere. She moaned softly at the touch, cleared her throat, and cuddled further into her sleeping bag. Sephiroth withdrew instantly, and watched her closely for any further signs of waking.

When the girl's breathing resumed its earlier rhythm, Sephiroth knelt beside her, and reached over her for the backpack behind her head. When he pulled it towards him, he saw that some of the girl's hair had gotten tangled in one of the straps. Cursing inwardly, he gingerly removed it, thankful that the small amount of pressure didn't rouse her. Tempted as he was to bank on the necklace being in the bag and run, Sephiroth refused to take the chance, lest he walk away empty-handed. He opened the backpack to sort through it, wondering just what this necklace might look like, as the girl hadn't mentioned anything specific, but as he unclasped the leather flap, a gunshot rang out.

The shot was a small distance away, but it was close enough to startled him, and certainly close enough to wake the sleeping female, and, with a gasp, she sat up so suddenly that her face collided with his chest. The girl gave a small shriek of surprise, and both she and Sephiroth pulled back. Now fully awake, the girl looked at him, and as Sephiroth recognized her as the defiant Cetra who ruined his plans, she recognized him as the psychotic madman who murdered her, and screamed.

The scream was loud, shrill, and as panic took hold, she tried to scramble backwards, away from him. Sephiroth heard male voices outside, and he quickly pushed his hand against her mouth to silence her. Her fingers tried to pry his hand off her mouth, and, when that didn't work, she tried to bite him. He grabbed her shoulder, and pushed her to the ground, tried to keep her still and quiet, but she fought against him, her hands swiping through the air to collide with his chest, his face.

Though the voices outside were muffled, they sounded distressed – his cover was blown.

Without a word, he let go of her mouth to grab the backpack, and throw one of the straps over his shoulder. The moment he did, her angry, muffled grunts became loud and clear cries for help.

"Where's the necklace?" He hissed at her, urgency lacing his tone, but the Cetra either didn't hear him, or didn't care, as she continued screaming for help. "Where the hell is the necklace!" He said again, but even as he did so, he was grabbing the girl's arm, and pulling her up with him as he stood. Sephiroth took hold of the tent, and pushed it over the two of them, knocking it out of the way, and the night wind brushed against him.

Sephiroth heard someone call his name, and he looked to see two more familiar faces. Though he didn't know their names, he clearly remembered them as members of Strife's little misfit group, but before Sephiroth even had time to wonder how and why they were here, the tree he stood beside caught fire.

The Cetra, seeing her friends, began to struggle harder, trying to pull away from him.

"Red! Vincent!" she cried.

The man in the cape began running towards him, mechanical claw outstretched. And, not having time to think of another option, Sephiroth yanked the girl towards him, using the inertia of the pull to throw her over his shoulder. The action stunned her still, and Sephiroth took this opportunity to escape into the forest.

* * *

Once the shock had worn off, and Aeris realized what was happening, she wriggled on Sephiroth's shoulder, insisting that he put her down, and pounded her fists against his back, when he didn't immediately comply.

Then, just as suddenly, Sephiroth stopped, and shrugged Aeris off his shoulder, and she fell on her backside with a thump.

"Ow! Holy hell…" she moaned, massaging the pain away, before suddenly standing, forgetting her pain and pointing an accusatory finger at Sephiroth. "You!"

Sephiroth regarded her with a blank, uninterested look.

"What the hell is your problem!" She began, wagging her finger at him as she did so. "You come and then leave, and then come back and leave again, and then you come back to _abduct_ me? And just what were you doing in my tent while I was asleep? I knew you were a madman, but I didn't think you were a pervert, too."

When she began her tirade, Sephiroth looked as if he had been deaf to the whole thing, but Aeris could have sworn that she saw his face darken slightly at her last comment.

"I most certainly am not," he said, his voice hinting at annoyance.

"Are, too!"

Sephiroth said nothing in return, and instead busied himself by taking the backpack off his shoulder, and setting it on the ground and to rummage through it.

"What are you…" the Aeris began, before realizing what Sephiroth was doing. "H-hey! That's my stuff!" She bent down to swipe it away from him, but Sephiroth stood quickly, taking the bag with him, and turned away from her. She glared at his back, wanting nothing more but to shove his own sword through it, like he did her. As tempted as she was to run around to his front and seize her backpack, she decided to wait, albeit impatiently – arms crossed, foot tapping heatedly at the ground, for him to stop and give it back to her.

Of course, all of that went out the window once he started dropping her belongings in the dirt.

She stormed around him, stomping her feet as she did so, stood in front of him, and huffed angrily. She looked at her clothes, which littered the ground, and watched in fury as he unceremoniously turned her bag upside down, and dumped the rest of its contents on the ground.

"You're going to pick them up," she said sternly, her voice shaking with rage.

"Where's the necklace?" He asked, not bothering to look up, or to acknowledge her statement.

"Did you hear me?"

"Is it in your pocket?"

"Ugh! What are you even talking about?"

This time, he looked up at her, eyes locking with her own, voice clearly frustrated as he said, "Do you have the necklace or not?"

"What necklace?" She shouted, before actually considering his question. "Wait, do you mean Kyoko's necklace?"

"Any necklace."

Aeris lowered her brow in confusion, thought of telling him to shove it, but reached into her pocket anyway. Her hand rested there for a minute before she frowned and reached into her other pocket, humming to herself.

"What's wrong?" Sephiroth asked.

"Hmm. Don't have it." She clearly recalled Nanaki asking her where she had gotten the necklace. Perhaps it was still with them?

Sephiroth stared at her blankly. "You don't have it?"

She patted her pockets and shrugged nonchalantly. "Looks that way."

Sephiroth lowered his head, and inwardly groaned.

Now, not only was he stuck in this godforsaken forest with no way out, but he was stuck here with _her_.

He should have taken his chances with the fire.

* * *

The barrel of the gun was nearly cool now, almost as if she had never fired the shot which set this all into motion.

Everything was perfect.

Well, almost: the loss of the necklace was a draw back, especially after she had gone through all the trouble of retrieving it, as now they were trapped in the forest. But, if they were meant to fulfill their duties, they would have to be resourceful.

A small smile graced her lips, and then, throwing the gun as hard as she could into the thicket, Kyoko exited the Enchanted Forest.

* * *

"The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in."

_-- A. E. Housman_

* * *

**Author's Notes: **

Hey everyone! Hope you all like the new chapter. I'm excited to finally be able to write the "action" part of it now that everything has been set up.

Reviews are inspirational, and I value and appreciate each and every one!

P.S. - Read _House of Leaves_, it's a great book! (Granted, okay, haven't read all of it yet, but...it's still very good)


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